A gaping hole in a tree looks out at the viewer; an eye on the scene, or perhaps a wound in its leafy armor. Two pines tower over a ranch-style home, sentinels on duty keeping watch on the neighborhood. A tree, with an ivy companion traversing its body, leans perilously over a fence as if trying to catch a glimpse of something just out of its reach. A nest sits tangled up in the upper reaches of limbs, a messy knot or series of crossed wires. Photographed with a disarming sense of intimacy, it is hard not to look at the trees of Jon Feinstein’s series Breathers without imbuing them with human characteristics.
Trees have long held importance in storytelling and language. We trace our histories in family trees, weave them into metaphors, and build origin stories around them. Across cultures, they are deeply connected to the act of memory. In the myth of Cyparissus, the Roman poet Ovid tells of a youth who has unwittingly killed his pet stag. Overcome with grief he begs Apollo to let his tears, much like the sap of a tree, flow for eternity. He is transformed into a cypress, a tree that the Romans would from that point onwards associate with mourning.
Feinstein’s Breathers is a typology of trees found in the Pacific Northwest where he and his family had moved to be closer to his wife’s mother who was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Filled with breaks, curves, and empty patches, the trees stand in reflection of the grief and loss Feinstein’s family experienced.
He began photographing trees in late 2017. But it was in early 2018, when he found himself with a lot of time on his hands, that he began taking the meditative walks that led him to discover new meaning amongst the branches. “I began experiencing my surrounding trees in a new, much more personal light,” he explains. “They felt like metaphors for our family’s emerging loss and memory loss. The holes in their branches. The patterns and flourishes seemed to symbolize brain activity. The hypnotic, long-stare-inducing flutter of their leaves.”
In a solo show entitled The Balance at Seattle’s Solas Gallery, Feinstein paired the images from Breathers alongside those of another project, What it Means to Be Alive. Working in black and white, he zeroes in on the forms of trees, drawing the eye to details—the shagginess of a particular form, the delicacy of a branch, the limbo-like bend of a trunk away from electrical lines. Reflecting on a span of traumatic losses for his family, Feinstein acknowledges the balance of life. “It felt like we were swimming in death or near death. Yet there were constant moments of joy and beauty,” he reflects. “My wife and I had two daughters—one born in late 2018, and our second in 2021.”
It is the birth of his children that punctuates the grief. The dandelions of What it Means to Be Alive, printed in rich blacks and at a smaller, more intimate scale, seem to glow. Feinstein explains, “Dandelions, like trees, are ridiculously over-photographed. They’re on every photo teacher’s ‘top 5 photo clichés’ list. But in a way, it might be because of their universality as symbols of mortality and perseverance. For me, they are a way to process joy and grief. I felt it most in the way light would hit and humanize them.”
What elevates Feinstein’s work to new heights is the emotional heft of his compositions; they harness the sorrow and strangeness of memory loss, whilst also allowing for flashes of humor and light. Through his portraits of trees and dandelions, he shows us how complex and multilayered human experience can be. In pairing his projects, Feinstein beautifully illustrates the one series’ title. What it Means to Be Alive is to experience grief, to suffer from loss, but also to find joy and wonder, and to know that living is the balance of it all.