Oak Trees, Red Bluff 1-8

Rodney Graham’s photographic series Ponderosa Pines (1992) and Oak Trees (1993–2000) are rooted in his experiments with the camera obscura. This is a darkened space into which light enters through a small hole, projecting an inverted image of the surroundings onto the opposite surface. “I was interested in the image of the upside-down tree from both a symbolic and an empirical perspective,” Graham explains. “We actually see things upside down before the brain intervenes, and that’s exactly how they appear on the ground glass at the back of a field camera.” These series illustrate how the human eye functions and demonstrate Graham’s ongoing exploration of how images become visible, materialize, are transmitted, and reproduced.