A Living Sense of Home

(2021-2022)​​

​

​​​

Forests furnish the earth. Trees furnish forests. I furnish trees.

​

For most people home is the place they can go to find peace and relief. Their home is shared with their beloved ones, and they furnish it to their heart’s wishes. Their flats and houses are their little treasury boxes, their bedrooms are where they collect memories from the past, and protect the valuables of the future. In this work I am looking for parallels between the architecture of our homes and the structure of trees. I am interested in the associated feelings and atmospheres that they resemble in our lives.

Thousands of years ago – people made their homes in caves and forests. They gathered their nutrition from trees, not imagining that the Oxygen that they were breathing originated from the same source.

 

 In many religious traditions trees obtained great symbolic significance, Pagans, for example, prayed at sites that contained the tallest trees, whereas, in Christianity the bible begins with the apple tree of knowledge; the first lesson of good and evil.  Willow trees, elderflowers, and lindens were associated with medicine and believed to provide medicine for some illnesses. In addition, they are the longest living species on earth, they provide humans with a link between the past, present and future. Most trees in this project have already surpassed me in age, and many are likely to remain longer than I will on this earth.

​

Wood, as a material, is used as a source of heat in the winter, and forms the standing structure of houses today. So dependant are we that we even farm trees, they are grown and nurtured for the specific purpose of being cut them down and manufactured on mass. The interiors in this project were found in books dating back to as early as the 1910’s, when furniture was made with the highest craftsmanship and designed to last for a century.

​

This project is calling for your inner child to join me in imagining all rooms of a treehouse. I am offering a glimpse inside, the habitation of aristocratic insects, communities of royal birds, jade coloured lichen and fungi, bats and owls under the bark. Trees provide shelter and protection to all, they don’t ask for anything in return. They are only giving. Our homes need maintenance, care and attention. Trees need soil, water and earth. They require space to do their jobs which mankind seems failing to provide. Without that they’ll be unable to maintain clean air and water, and sustain biodiversity in the changing climate. We have to take care of our trees through growing and conservation, as much as we would like to protect our own homes. They are evitable to human life on earth.

​

​

All prints are unique montages. Edition 1/1

​

The project was awarded the  Coup de Cœur  Leica Prize by Hangar Photo Art Center. 

 

Prices on request, please contact:

paul.delamarandais@hangar.art​

​