My home, Bowen Island, has been continually logged since the late 1890s, and I am obsessed with the beautiful piles of rotting debris that often cluster around the surviving local old-growth stumps. Close examination of these mounds reveals their slow decay through time as erosion, water, UV, insect, gravity, animal, and human activity wear down and soften the structures. Then too is the accumulation of windfall trees and branches adding to the chaos, while new growth emerges from the mulch.
At some point, the photos became portraits of our own decay and a slow return to the earth.
There is a gloomy, haunted element in these photos - a sense that the landscape is inhabited, and we are trespassing on a dark aspect of nature.
