Italian Cypresses of the Inland Empire. 2018 © Scott Banks Twenty photographs, displayed here as a grid of cropped thumbnails which expand when selected and reveal arrows for sequential advancement. Physical version consists of 6″ X 9″ inch photographs with white mats in 9″ X 12″ black frames, mounted as a grid with four rows and five columns.
Around the time of these photographs I decided to adopt the architecture, landscape and topography of the place I live as a subject for photography. At the same time, I realized that I found selecting specific places to photograph burdensome. I did not like the idea that I was deciding what to represent, what not to represent, and how to represent what I did represent—and I also thought it dishonest to pretend I was not doing all these things. I did not know it then, but I wanted a sensation of peacefulness that I would find by letting go of the responsibility to judge.
I noticed there was a kind of tree that people plant all over the place where I live, and which after being planted lives almost entirely unremarked-upon. I decided to let the this tree function as a kind of marker that would tell me to take a photograph. I decided further that I would take the photograph only if it could be taken facing north, and only in the early part of the day, so as to ensure consistent lighting of the cylindrical form of the tree.