Tree Forts and the Quiet Photograph

This short essay is a description of some recent work I’m editing. It’s hard to write something about your own work, and requires you to step back and consider it as if you have never seen it before. It’s a good skill to practice. Note: I’m still practicing!

In these photographs, a fog-shrouded forest reveals makeshift tree forts that seem to populate its edges. The images convey a sombre and quietly evocative mood, evoking the power of place and the psychological undercurrent that lingers here.

At first glance, the viewer is met with mossy trunks, half-finished wooden platforms, and ladder-like structures that ascend into the bare canopy. The air is thick with morning mist, muting the colours into subdued grays and greens. Together, these elements construct a visual poem about memory, the desire for refuge, and humanity’s ambiguous relationship with nature.

Such understated imagery calls to mind the sensibility that critic and photographer Gerry Badger identifies in his essay “Without Author or Art: The ‘Quiet’ Photograph.” In Badger’s words, a “quiet” photograph possesses a sort of self-effacing restraint: it does not shout its meaning or flaunt its authorial style but instead draws the viewer into a state of contemplation. Here in these photographs, the subdued light, the fog’s hush, and the anonymous construction of the forts align perfectly with that notion. They starkly contrast to the metal power line towers also making their way through this same tiny forest. Most importantly, rather than explaining or dramatizing, the pictures create an atmosphere. This enveloping hush invites the viewer to reflect on the significance of these structures and the bridge only vaguely seen through the fog and trees. Danger quietly haunts the site. Looking up, you wonder, “Are these safe?” This is not a meaningless question, the bridge we see is a replacement for the bridge that collapsed during construction.

Often landscape photography is understated but pointed commentary on how humans transform nature—sometimes tragically. In the Vancouver images, the transformation is small-scale but profound: rough boards and wood scraps hammered into place, suspended above the forest floor. These ephemeral structures, painted with graffiti or left weather-worn, speak to a do-it-yourself ethos that is at once resourceful and precarious. They reveal a level of skill that is part of normal adolescent maturity and necessary for independence. They have that sense of living apart. On their own. Then again, maybe it’s not about growing up, but about not wanting to. Anxiety about what the future holds.

The subjects that landscape photographers often document include suburbia’s sprawl into once-pristine land. However, these photographs reveal a different kind of human intervention: not large developers but individuals improvising, shaping a personal refuge in the trees.

The Iron Workers Memorial Bridge in Vancouver, in the background of the first image, stands as a poignant symbol of tragedy, named in memory of those who lost their lives during the bridge’s construction. That sorrowful history also hangs over the site like the fog in the photographs, reminding us of the tenuous relationship between human aspiration and the forces of nature.

The tree forts, perched just beyond the urban boundary, feel like both an escape from that history and a silent acknowledgement of it. They are precarious outposts overlooking the city’s bustle, existing on the threshold between civilization and wilderness. In this way, the images capture an unspoken tension: the forest is at once comforting—mossy, enveloping, quiet—and yet haunted by the tragedies associated with nearby industry and infrastructure. In the distance, from the highest point, the downtown area can be seen. But I won’t climb; I don’t trust the hold of the nails nor the strength of the wood.

In visual terms, the photographs share compositional elements reinforcing their reflective tone. The camera lingers on damp leaves and mist, emphasizing texture and atmosphere rather than drama. Lines of tree trunks frame the makeshift constructions, while the subdued colour palette and diffused light lend a melancholic stillness. This echoes the aesthetic of a “quiet photograph”: no obvious human presence besides the remnants of human activity, no single event or figure to anchor the narrative. Instead, the viewer is given the space to meditate on the interplay between what has been built and what remains of the natural environment.

Ultimately, these photographs and the place they document stand as quiet witnesses to how people mark the landscape, whether by grand infrastructure or humble fort. They echo the contemplative approach of photographers like Robert Adam’s, and nod to Alec Soth’s fascination with outliers seeking refuge, and embody the essence of what Badger calls “the quiet photograph.” An unspoken narrative is at play, woven from the fog and the remnants of human presence. The forts themselves—anonymous, improvised, perched on the edge of nature—speak to the human drive to find sanctuary in an overwhelming and indifferent world. In capturing these scenes, the photographer creates a subtle reminder of the perpetual human longing for solace and escape.

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