"When the Trees Sing" is an exploration and imaginative journey of what Barbara Dombach envisions the forest is saying to her.

“I was a curious child and began piano lessons at a young age, but music did not become my passion. All I wanted to do was be outdoors and in the woodland with my grandfather and father. They harvested the dead trees for firewood. When all the cutting went silent, I would listen to the sound of the movements of tree leaves curling and limbs as they stretched and rubbed one another. The sounds were like a song, like an unfinished composition filled with scattered whole, quarter, and half notes in different octaves.”

Kate Kennington Seer shares this meditation on how chronic illness mediates her contact with a single place, often dictating how - the means and the form - she makes a photograph, until, on some days it becomes the subject of photographic enquiry no matter what the situation.  This portfolio is an attempt to render some of this visible.

In this portfolio, Yvonne asks if a place holds memory, if it remembers. These images are made at the Topography of Terror Site in Berlin, an exhibition that addresses the horrors of the Nazi regime. Topography studies land forms and features, it traces the surface. The visitor has an annotated map to follow. When the body reacts by changing posture and step, and the eyes scrutinize every detail, is it simply the brain imagining, creating composites? - Would there be a change if one didn’t have a map?

Julie Williams Dixon made these image one afternoon as she waded in an ancient river, a body of water. Here, she sunned her body on ancient stones and pondered the transience of her physical body in juxtaposition to ancient surroundings. Playing with scale and abstraction, she explored the space between transience and eternity.

In This Place is an ongoing project that celebrates the intimate and familiar places near Paul Wanta’s home in Wendell, Massachusetts. As an experienced wildlife tracker, Paul is especially attuned to capturing subtle changes and nuances within the specific parameters of the places he thoughtfully wanders.

During the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns, many local independent businesses had to close their doors. Walking through the empty streets, Shawn saw shops, cafés, and gathering places—once alive with people—now closed and silent. These spaces became separated from us by panes of glass, a barrier between us and the world we knew, between us and the spaces we inhabit - Separated by an invisible force, a virus, that is passed between us, between bodies.

Kaye Savage is investigating environmental change, especially climate change, through the lens of particular plants. After the destruction of some of her intended long-term observation sites for Bloodroot resulting from Hurricane Helene, she placed some earlier photographs in new environments. The Bodies of this plant that she had been photographing are no longer accessible, and in some locations completely destroyed. Kaye is offering them a new opportunity to exist in a different context by placing these photographs in locations where this plant might have a chance to thrive, if it were present; instead they exist now only in our imagination and our records.

In this portfolio, Gretchen LeMaistre returns to the same sites along the Swannanoa River in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in an attempt to share the visceral reaction she has experienced in this place. While the photographs convey only a fraction of experience, she hopes they can function as tokens for conversation, connection and witness with one another and with the world at large.

Pregnancy is a direct embodiment of the question — where does one body end and another begin? In this portfolio, Eliza Bell embarks on a deep exploration of the known and unknown alongside the pregnant people she photographs.

Several years ago, Ann Villano became obsessed with taking photos of decaying edifices: barns, old houses, falling stone walls. When she considered images for "Between Bodies," she focused instead on images where she saw a transference of energy between two entities. In these photos, trees or plants are giving, taking, and supporting. They stand guard over a cemetery, beam energy onto a decaying house, or hold up decaying walls. In some cases, one cannot be sure where one material starts and the other ends. 

In this ongoing series, Barron explores the relationship between the human body and the landscape he walks everyday by listening to and responding to the landscape rather than dominating it. By molding his body into the terrain, he creates a visual dialogue between the human and natural worlds, emphasizing vulnerability, coexistence, and interconnectedness.

In this tender portfolio, Kaoly Gutierrez relates to other bodies—both literal and metaphorical—by exploring how personal experiences, emotions, and histories shape her interactions with others. For Kaoly, the “bodies” in question aren’t just physical, but represent the relational dynamics and energies between people: the hidden thoughts, judgments, desires, and unspoken histories that linger in our connections.

In this series of photographs, Rosie Villano investigates the question: what does it mean to embody a relationship to the earth? For them, that means learning about the land they live on, knowing the food they eat, and appreciating the bounty. These photographs are an expression of their love and reverence for the land.

Frances Bukovsky began photographing Upheaval while seaching for a home, both within their own body, as well as the world around them. Set in Appalachia between their hometown and their chosen home, Upheaval revisits childhood memories and forges new connections between body and geography to assemble a sense of self informed by cycles of grief and upheaved circumstances.

When Alli Harper began swimming during the lockdown, it changed her connection to the earth. For the first time, she keenly observed the weather patterns moving over the sky, wondering at the migratory birds in the air, the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun, the tug of the ocean's currents, and the abundant life beneath the water. Suddenly, Alli’s world expanded into something so much bigger, more important, and precious.

Looking for a way to explore depression without making clichéd images, Ruth Steinberg chose the cyanotype process for its interpretive possibilities, which allowed for the multi-layering of self-portraits and plant material to evoke, rather than tell, her story.

Susan Patrice spent years learning to communicate with an Appalachian forest. What emerged was a set of practices that she used daily, much like gestural prayers enacted as rituals before photographing.

In this circle of relationships, each element has much to give. The sun gives the greatest gift of all, life itself. The plants offer endless gifts, each with a role in a complex ecological web, offering us food, medicine and countless other gifts both tangible and intangible.

Shauna Caldwell uses multimedia and photographic processes to honor land, familial connections, sacred relationships, and transformation.