Portsmouth photographer Jan Douglas Armor has installed a display of photographs of trees of Aquidenck Island on the library exhibit walls. The 12 photographs from his collection represented in the library are done in black and white and show beautifully stark silhouettes of either individual trees or of stands of them. The one pictured here is titled "Littleleaf Lindens" and is located at Glen Farm, once the home of H.A.C.Taylor, now the property of the town of Portsmouth. Around 1910 when he built his "Glen Manor House" there, approximately 116 of these trees were planted. Portsmouth Prioy had a similar "alee" of Dutch elm trees leading to it's Manor House. Unfortunately, they all died of disease. The photography project was made possible in part by financial assistance from the R.I. State Council On the Arts, Newport Grid And The Newport Tree Society.

Jan writes..
Our trees are dying. I do not mean that just some trees are dying - in, say, the forests of Brazil or Europe or Southeast Asia, where they are felled by buzz saws, greed and ignorance. That's part of the story but not all of it. For the trees are dying everywhere, including here in the United States of America. They are dying on the ridges of our Appalachians, in the sugar bush of Vermont, in the thick forests of central Michigan, and in the deserts of the Southwest. They are dying on the mountains of Colorado and California, and on the gulf of Mexico. They are even dying in the Northwest - even before they are cut. We are witnessing the accumulated consequences of some 150 years of headlong economic development and industrial expansion. Some scientists are now suggesting that this dying may become a cause of a potentially catastrophic failure of global ecological balances. Ecologists have described nightmarish biochemical and atmospheric feedback loops wherein the more trees die, the more they will die." (From The Dying Of The Trees by Charles Little)

A voice for the trees...
Our trees can't speak but if they could I doubt if they would have much nice to say about us. Trees have always been a natural resource for man, incredibly useful in many ways. (I used paper to print and mat these images). Trees are building materials to shelter us from the elements, fuel to keep us warm, decoration for our lawns, lots of junk mail to throw away, hot tubs, decks and beautiful furniture. We know that "trees are vital in many ways. Their ecological and aesthetic importance is often recognized, but there is another--their psychological power. It is hard to imagine a world without trees. After Hurricane Andrew had devastated the Homestead area of southern Florida in 1992 a local newspaper described something surprising:

It was the trees that so many people spoke of.
In the aftermath of the complete devastation that Andrew wrought on the people of Homestead, they sometimes stopped, mid-conversation, and remarked about the loss of a pine or acacia that was had been a benchmark of their lives, and was now lost. They spoke of the scent of the leaves, the shade from the burning sun, the stretches of green that had made Homestead special.

(From Michael Perlman's The Power Of Trees)

I must be a voice for the trees. Even as I have embraced this subject artistically, I have become more conscious of their plight. As a photographer I am privileged to be able to show you what I have seen, perhaps even to have you feel what I felt standing looking at some silent, magnificent tree. But I am also compelled to make you aware that our trees, a metaphor for our whole environment, are at risk. The more I learn, the more I am convinced that we must do much more to protect what we have left. Often trees are right in the way of our highways and our developments. We haven't been particularly good stewards of this precious commodity. We have cut and cleared and burned and abused our trees for all of human history. In the last century the devastation has accelerated at an alarming rate. In simple terms, of course, it is about money. From conserving, to recycling, to politicizing, we need to do much more. I want our children, and their children, all of those that will come after us, to know the beauty of our trees. 

"What will the axemen do, when they have cut their way from sea to sea."
James Fenimore Cooper in the Pioneers, 1823.

A gallery of gelatin silver photographs, approximately 10"x 13", signed front or back,at $600 each, including a 20x24" archival rag matand black frame are available from Jan at 401-683-3754.