Dead & Alive is a series of photographs that portrays decaying trees, fostering new life in the material they leave behind. In the Pacific Northwest new trees often grow from a nest in the crown of a stump and eventually the roots integrate the old tree into their being. Onwards and upwards is a phrase my father used often, as much a rallying cry for himself as words of encouragement for us. In the tangle of life and death, energy is not lost, it is merely transferred. As in human affairs, living organisms start out oriented towards the cosmos and continue striving in that direction until their end when the process begins again.
