Endurance Amidst Noise

James Ayers

Photographs are capable of two kinds of surprises. They can offer the conventional experience of strangeness in a place you would never have encountered, if it were not for the image. Or they present a scene with which you assume you are entirely familiar but transform it, revealing something of which you have never been aware. James Ayers makes work which manifests both versions of the unexpected.

The ​“Trunk” series which Ayers has been compiling redefines the notion of tree line from horizontal to vertical. He composes pictures in which nature bifurcates our cultural facades, and we are brought to a halt by the endurance of plants in the midst of all our architectural noise. This is news from the ordinary world which we ignore to our loss.

Other work by the artist can be viewed at