In nature, I am drawn to the expressive impact of a single motif, that of trees, the "muscles of the landscape."

I have photographed trees extensively, as one might photograph friends or family, almost without realizing it. Trees resemble us; they are alive, they are our ancestors, they protect us. Trees also reflect our weaknesses back to us, encourage us, and urge us toward humility. Their roots anchored in the earth, their branches swaying in the winds of history, they are thinking reeds.

A guardian of life, the tree symbolizes communion with comforting nature; the tree symbolizes timelessness. Lone in the middle of a field, a figure of uniqueness in the world, a tree can redefine the entire perspective of a landscape. The motif of the tree possesses something both pure and poignant. This motif alone sings only of absence, of near-silence. A symbol of life and knowledge, the tree is one of the great founding myths of our imagination. A link between heaven and earth, art and nature, myth and reality, the tree is first and foremost a living organism. The tree is Life; it invites us to lift our heads and look beyond, to guide our steps now.

The tree is the choreography of the landscape, its driving force. The tree symbolizes the dynamism of rootedness and upward growth; its growth is entirely driven by the quest for resources, both light and mineral.

Photography reveals the moment. The tree represents the landscape as a duration, in which past and future coexist. Tree photography brings together all these temporalities.

The tree has greatly influenced artists, particularly Mediterranean poets, who transcend the tree in their poems: Jules Renard, Vénus Khoury Ghata, Stratis Pascalis, Mahmoud Darwish, Muriel Augry, Andrée Chedid, and Nazim Hikmet. But the tree has also always been a subject for photography, from the pioneers of the 19th century to contemporary artists. “Resilience, magnificence, solitude, mystery, mysticism, environmental struggle: these are just some of the symbols that photography lends to these subjects.”