2011–Ongoing
in a forest depicts a selection of the now fully-grown oaks which were gifted as seedlings to 130 gold medal winning competitors at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. It is often said that Adolph Hitler presented the seedlings to athletes on the podium invoking the powerful symbolism of the olive branches awarded during the Ancient Olympic Games. [1] Taking as photographic subject the urban mythology, conflicted symbolism and distinctive stature of the oak trees, in a forest forces us to confront the complexity of historical memory that circulates around these arboreal specimens.
Using the tree that stands in my hometown of Timaru, New Zealand as a catalyst, I have reconstructed and mapped the dispersal of many of these trees across North America and Europe. With recipients as diverse as a Jewish Hungarian freedom fighter, a Sturmbannführer, a Finnish poet, men who subsequently went missing in action, and African American athletes such as Jesse Owens, these trees faced unpredictable fates; dying in customs halls, being stolen from hotel rooms, rescued during invasions, and chopped down to make room for vegetable gardens after the war.
These gifts from the National Socialist regime represent a failed attempt at an organic infiltration and propagation of ideological power. The oak trees symbolism has since been reconstructed in many locations where it is vested with the heroic Olympic narratives of the nation states in which they grow. Complicating these singular narratives, the now statuesque 83 year-old trees stand as both remnants of the Third Reich and as signs of its erasure. More generally, they are linked to a particular nostalgia for the German landscape, and a long history of tree and forest symbolism in Europe and the northern hemisphere.
Photographing with a large format view camera, the artworks in this series depict some of the trees still in existence or the sites they once occupied. Accompanied by extended titles that summarize and chronicle their diverse lives and locations, the images abstract the trees, restating their symbolic resonance and opening them to a range of conflicting meanings. Arranged in dense installations that simultaneously document and invert the historical record, these photographs are both embodiments of memory and marks of forgetting.
[1]The seedlings are often said to have been presented by Hitler himself although it seems more likely that the majority of them were presented by Olympic Committee members. Controversy surrounds the speculation that Hitler refused to present them to African American athletes including Jesse Owens and many conflicting accounts are still in circulation.
