SADIE WECHSLER

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FIELD CAPACITY

For the last few years, I have honed my attention on the plants and trees that occupy the wild spaces of my world, those that fill the cracks, slopes, and byways. They make places of recreation, carbon capture, temperature stabilization, wildlife habitat, and retreat. How are trees and their ecosystems understood, cataloged, propagated, honored, and transformed?

This project started as deep research, leading me back to school to study plants, their relationships, design, and organization, and then into working with trees as my day job, caring for and replanting our city. Through my cyclical process of photographing, altering, and rephotographing, trees slump over themselves, charred fibers still holding form. The fossils of seeds sit cold and hollow, as their cousins thrive not far from the regulated temperature of the museum. Camas root is trapped, taped, and removed from its cycle of burns and blooms. And the juniper, despite its tenacity, cannot quite stand the pressure asserted by the heat produced around the cyan rocks at its base. These organisms are multigenerational witnesses to the transformation of the land, plant communities that hold stories long-buried and overgrown but not entirely forgotten.