Photographs That Are Lovely, Dark and Deep
“Elm Street, 1978, Oblong Valley,CT”
Photo by Tom Zetterstrom

Photographs That Are Lovely, Dark and Deep

It’s easy to take Tom Zetterstrom of North Canaan, Conn., for granted. He’s always there, working hard to protect the trees of our landscape (especially the elms). He doesn’t really ask for our help, he just …gets to it. 

What he does ask for, however, is that we notice. That we notice the beauty around us, especially the beauty of the trees. And that we notice threats to those trees, notably the non-native invasive plants that choke them and make our roadsides and forests a) unsightly and b) unhealthy and c) a haven for disease-bearing ticks. 

To help us see what we might otherwise miss, Zetterstrom tirelessly visits all our area towns and offers workshops on how to stop the spread of Japanese knotweed, or whatever is the most aggressive interloper in any given year.

But he helps us notice in another way: Zetterstrom is an award-winning photographer whose work is not only in many museum and private collections, it’s also in the Library of Congress. His photos are of (yes) trees.

That his work has earned so many accolades will clue you in to their beauty. The images are black-and-white silver gelatin prints, shot on a film camera, soft focus and ghostly. They make you understand what the druids meant when they said that spirits live in trees. 

The photos are usually in black and white, usually soft and glowy, always haunting. Someone described them recently as being shot “in portrait mode,” with the background softened to the point where it seems to disappear. 

For those of us who know Zetterstrom but perhaps have never seen his photographs, for those who already admire the beauty of the trees around us (in forests, in parking lots, on historic town greens) and want to see them get the loving artistic treatment they deserve, there is a show of his work opening Friday, Sept. 17,  at the Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Leonhardt Galleries. There will be an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. There are 36 of his images in Portraits of American Trees.

In addition to the gallery show, Zetterstrom will also offer three talks on the art of tree photography, on Sundays Sept. 19 at 1 p.m. and Oct. 10 and 24 at 11 a.m.

And of course, because he is as passionate about protecting trees as he is about creating beautiful images of them, he will offer four talks in a series called Whose Woods These Are: Defeating Japanese Knotweed on the Wild and Scenic Housatonic River on Sept. 25 from 10 to 11 a.m.; History and Preservation of the American Elm in New England on Oct. 2 from 3:30 to 5 p.m.; Defeating Oriental Bittersweet and Protecting Standing Forests on Oct 9 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. (there will be a cut-and-treat workshop along with the talk); and Pruning Young Elms, designed for arborists, tree wardens, horticulturalists, and the public on Oct. 30 from 10 a.m. to noon (again, the talk is followed by a hands-on workshop).

To find out more and to get directions, go to www.berkshirebotanical.org.

Latest News

The year was 1973­: Two roads diverged

In 1973, Donald and Fred Trump were engaged for two years in a battle with the DOJ: “..specifically a case that charges Donald Trump, Fred Trump and their company of race bias in housing rentals. …It was one of the largest cases of the time.”

Michael Kranish

Keep ReadingShow less
A day in the life of a newspaper truck driver

Around 9 a.m. every Wednesday morning a 26-foot box truck from the printer backs up to a storage garage behind The Lakeville Journal’s office in Falls Village to unload copies of the week’s Lakeville Journal and Millerton News.

Between then and about 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, it’s up to the Journal’s own drivers — AAdam Williams, Brian Murphy and me — to deliver these new papers to six realtors, 18 post offices, and 46 retail outlets within a 30-mile radius of the office.

Keep ReadingShow less
Turning Back the Pages

100 years ago — March 1924

The mysterious disappearance of Lawrence Travis, 20 years old, in a Star Sedan belonging to A.S. Martin, was solved at 5 o’clock last Thursday afternoon, when the car containing the young man’s body was drawn to the surface of the lake, after hours of hard and dangerous work. The search for the body resulted from the discovery of a patch of black oil under the surface of the ice by William Bassett, a fellow worker of Travis at Martin’s Garage. Mr. Bassett had never been fully satisfied in his mind that young Travis had gone very far away and he believed that some accident had befallen him. On Thursday John H. Garrity’s small derrick was taken to the lake and block and tackle installed. By this time a crowd of between two and three hundred people had gathered, and many hands laid hold of the rope to draw the car out. Soon it was resting on the ice, and a moment later Michael P. Flynn entered the car and brought forth the remains of the unfortunate young man. An autopsy conducted by Medical Examiner Bissell was done immediately after recovery of the body and death was found to have been due to drowning. Much sympathy is felt for Mr. John Travis, father of the young man, and his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Owen Travis, with whom the lad had lived. There is a great feeling of sadness throughout the community over his untimely death.

Keep ReadingShow less