THE MUSIC OF TREES
by Ryan J. Bush, Ph.D.
with a foreword by Katherine Ware
108 pages, 55 full-color photographs
Book dimensions: 12" x 11 3/4"
ISBN #978-0-9993930-0-0
Available from Amazon and select retailers
Retail price: $65.00 US
"With all the challenges we face in our modern, chaotic world, it is easy to get too distracted by materialism and superficiality, to be too daunted by obstacles, or to feel too busy to do more than just survive. So, we need as many reminders as possible that there is more to the world than meets the eye. Everything we need to know is whispered in the music of trees."
-- excerpt from The Music of Trees
"The influence of music on the work is strong, and the artist seeks to bring a musicality to the visuals. This intention is evident in the images’ palpable internal tempo. These photographs resound with beats of movement and stillness, always conveying the sense of something captured but not arrested. A book of great vision and continuity, The Music of Trees orchestrates a journey from the admiration of beauty to a place that vibrates with its own internal frequency."
-- excerpt from Foreword Reviews, Nov./Dec. 2018
This book is a journey through three series of tree photographs by internationally-exhibited fine-art photographer Ryan J. Bush, Ph.D, and through three different ways of seeing, going from relatively representational photographs, to abstract photographs from the world of the imagination, to all-over colorscapes influenced by visionary consciousness and the Oneness that unites us all.
Bush has always been drawn to trees, since growing up in Michigan next to a vacant forested lot that he loved to explore. For more than twenty-one years, trees have been a favorite subject of his critically-acclaimed photography, so it is only fitting that his first monograph is devoted to trees. This book features three of his series of tree photographs, Tree Portraits, Memoria, and Multiple Visions, each of which played a seminal role in his growth as an artist.
The first of these three series,Tree Portraits (2004-2007), shows how his work evolved from relatively representational images of trees, but gradually became fully abstract, helping him find his voice as an abstract photographer.
The second series, Memoria (2011-2013), uses multiple exposure photographs to depict not the physical form of the tree, but an experience of the tree, a type of ‘inner’ reality.
And finally, Multiple Visions (2012-2013), takes the multiple exposure technique into large-scale works filled with vibrant, all-over patterns of color, like finding Abstract Expressionist canvases in the middle of a forest.
These three series of photographs also reflect three different ways of seeing — from relatively representational images that are closest to our ordinary way of seeing (in which we may barely notice things around us as we rush around multitasking, or are caught up in our thoughts), to the imaginal world of creativity, intuition, and the psyche, and the visionary world of connection with everything that lies beyond our ordinary selves. Throughout, this book points to a way of being, inspired by the quiet, resolute power of trees, that can help us meet any of life’s challenges.
When we slow down and listen to the music of trees, who knows what mysteries we will uncover?
The book includes a foreword by Kate Ware, Curator of Photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art, and an introduction by Ryan J. Bush.
Available on Amazon and at select retailers.