Home Winds

H OM E WI NDS

heather Woods Broderick

benjamin Swett

H OM E WI N D S

H OM E WI NDS A song by heather Woods Broderick photographs by benjamin Swett foreword by elleree Erdos

pLANTHOUSE NEW YORK

A painter’s eye will often be arrested where ordinary people see nothing remarkable. A casual gleam of sunshine, or a shadow thrown across his path, a time-withered oak, or a moss-covered stone may awaken a strain of thoughts and feelings, and picturesque imaginings.1 –William Henry Fox Talbot

The Pencil of Nature

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f the photograph captures a distinct moment, then the tree is its foil; it endures the prolonged passage of time with dignity and poise. The photographs in this book engage a unique temporality that extends beyond the singular indexical moment of an image.

Taken over the course of a year, on six separate visits to the Michel family’s farm Home Winds in Gladstone, New Jersey by the photographer Benjamin Swett, the images as a group illustrate a year in the life of the land. But they also refer to the cycle of nature, the passing of seasons, and the repetition inherent in that cycle as the land adapts.

The same tree may reappear in various guises, a recurring reminder of the land’s endurance.

Heather Woods Broderick’s hopeful, mellow ballad is an ode to this sense of perpetuity, to the possibility that generations down the line may return and find comfort and awe in the same vistas, walk among the same fields, and rest under the same shady trees. The photographs and music together stir a sense of attachment to place—and more specifically, to land—that grows stronger over time.

For centuries, art has visually preserved nature’s wonders.

When William Henry Fox Talbot wrote The Pencil of Nature in 1844, photography had yet to establish its place among the arts, but Talbot nevertheless saw the potential for light to conjure the same romantic musings of a Dutch still life or an English landscape painting. The invention of photography was an opportunity for chance encounters with nature’s splendor to be recognized and recorded, rather than imitated by hand.

William Henry Fox Talbot, (English, 1800-1877) {Oak Tree in Winter}, probably 1842-43 Salted paper print, 19.4 x 16.6 cm (7 5 / 8 x 6 9/16 in.)

J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

Over fifty years later, Theodore Roosevelt, moved by his own encounters with the outdoors, made land preservation a core component of his presidential platform. During his presidency, Roosevelt created over 50 wildlife refuges, started the Reclamation Service to create arable land in areas previously too dry to farm, and established both the Bureau of Forestry and the National Conservation Commission.2 Talbot sought to capture the same moments of astonishment at the spellbinding qualities of nature that Roosevelt fought to preserve —proof that nature’s magnificence can transcend time and history. Roosevelt’s words, from a 1908 speech, are equally resonant today: “We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources and we have just reason to be proud of our growth… It is time for us now as a nation to exercise the same reasonable foresight in dealing with our great natural resources that would be shown by any prudent man in conserving and widely using the property which contains the assurance of well-being for himself and his children.”3 In the modern era, as land is rapidly industrialized, Talbot’s Oak Tree from the mid-1840s stands as a reminder of nature’s great endurance as well as its vulnerability. The bare tree silhouetted against the sky, with an army of its relatives in the distance, is stable but exposed.

Its core is solid, but its outer branches are like vunerable threads of lace trimming.

Swett’s photographs are Talbot’s modern counterparts. The medium-format Hasselblad camera and 2 1/4 x 2 1/4-inch film allow for a high level of clarity and a minimal grain, so the images can be enlarged without losing any focus or sharpness. The square format, for Swett, oVers a more “complete” image that unites the foreground and background in unforeseen ways. The monumentality of the photographs themselves (printed at 32 x 32 inches or 44 x 44 inches, depending on the image) echoes that of their subjects—the trees—and the methodical cataloguing of the trees is evocative of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s architectural portraiture, if vastly diVerent in mood. There is an unexpected irony in the way that these objective, detached images summon a sense of nostalgia and sentimentality in the viewer. Swett is less interested in classifying the trees than in diVerentiating them—conveying each one’s individual character and evoking the history it has stored within its branches. In this way, the photographs act more as portraits than as landscapes. The challenge of such a project is to capture the intimacy of the property while also conveying its immensity.

As with any successful portrait, Swett’s photographs tell stories, in keeping with the artist’s continued interest in the intersections of text, image, and oral histories. Paired with the wistful lyrics of Broderick’s ballad, these photographs illustrate the unfolding of time in a very speciWc way, in a specific place, but they also conjure our own personal memories of nature. The best way to attract an emotionally engaged viewer is for the artist himself to be similarly immersed. Swett’s images reXect his own growing attachment to

the land over the course of six visits. He charts the land by way of its trees; each is a point on the map, but also a character in the landscape’s chronicle. Beneath the sheltering branches of one tree rests a herd of cattle or a lone donkey; other trees are gallant gatekeepers; still others frame the expansive vistas of cultivated fields.

The photographs immortalize the land for us, so that we may all be Talbot’s painter, our reminiscences awakened by the sight of the “time-withered oak.”

The arts have the ability to inspire renewed appreciation for often-overlooked phenomena. Music can trigger familiar, powerful emotions not frequently felt with such intensity—longing, heartbreak, melancholy—while images encourage us to look anew at the everyday. The same brilliance that we admire in the largest national parks and natural wonders is also present in the simplest elements of nature. With the tree, the fundamental building block of our landscape, as inspiration, this book unites the visual and the auditory in a call to action: preserve and care for the land we inhabit.

– Elleree Erdos 1 William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature, (Project Gutenburg, 2010), plate VI. 2 Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography, (Scribner’s, 1926), accessed online via Project Gutenberg.

3 Roosevelt made these comments in a speech delivered on May 13, 1908 at the Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources. See “Brief Biography: The Conservationist,” on the website of the Theodore Roosevelt Association: www. theodoreroosevelt.org.

HOM E WIN D S a song by Heather Woods Broderick

I feel far away from where I belong

They say that all the struggle is what keeps you strong

I struggled then, I struggle now, and I’ll struggle on

I struggled then, I struggle now, and I’ll struggle on

Do I truly recall your face from when it was young

Or from a photo I’ve seen, or the wall on which it was hung

I looked up to you then, I look back now, and I’ll look on

I looked up to you then, I look back now, and I’ll look on

I’ve never been back to the town from which I’m from

When the timing is right the home winds will tell me to come

I longed it for then, I long for it now, and I’ll long on

I waited then, I’m waiting now, and I’ll wait on

SHORELINE The shoreline’s turning pages at my left In a novel, someone should have kept The daylight’s beating rays upon my back And this is not sleeping but it’s what I’m calling rest And then I heard him calling, he was calling after me Asking me to lift my head and hands out from my knees First words are cotton, slightly chaYng neck And driftwood looks like buoys through these painted eyes I guess And then I heard him calling, he was calling after me Asking me to lift my head and hands out from my knees The river’s dark and pulling, it is moving toward the sea The current it is strong, too strong for the likes of me

Home Winds celebrates the Michel family’s fifty years in central New Jersey’s Roxiticus Valley and a commitment to preserving farmland in Somerset County. Named for the region’s prevailing northwest breeze, this visual and audio remembrance of the property’s maples, oaks, and elms speaks for the trees we lived with. Observing their gentle rustle, we heard their quiet tune.

– Fritz Michel

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Home Winds is the first in a series of publications published by Planthouse Gallery to support programs and initiatives dedicated to environmental issues. The digital release of the song Home Winds will benefit institutions devoted to fight­ing climate change. Home Winds, inspired by the trees, the farm, and all those who tirelessly advocate for the environment, is an admiring tribute to Mother Earth.

Benjamin Swett’s photographs were all taken at the Michel Family farm, Home Winds, in Gladstone, New Jersey in 2013 –2014.

Heather Woods Broderick recorded the original song Home Winds in February 2015 in Portland, Oregon with her brother, Peter Broderick.

Shoreline was written in Portland, Oregon on an afternoon at Cottonwood Bay, which is located at the South Waterfront on the Willamette River.

HOM E W IN D S a Song by heather woods Broderick Photographs by benjamin swett

THANK YOU Betsy Michel, Lee Michel and Fritz Michel, Jake Michel Sadie and Claire Schlesinger, Stella and Cleo Michel Brad Ewing, Leslie Miller, and Hollis Witherspoon

The typeface is Perpetua.

Perpetua is a typeface that was designed by English sculptor and typeface designer Eric Gill (1882–1940) for Monotype.

HOME WINDS © 2017 Planthouse, Inc. Songs © Heather Woods Broderick, Photographs © Benjamin Swett, Text© Elleree Erdos Designed by Katie Michel. All Rights Reserved. ISBN: 978-0-9862814-0-2 .

Printed in Italy by Trifolio.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

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