Redwoods as an Idea

an online webinar by Robert Buelteman

I came out of this world, not into it.

This subtle but critical distinction has guided my perception and the interpretation of the natural world as found in all the photographs I’ve made, with and without the use of cameras. In this online presentation hosted by Sempervirens Fund, California’s oldest land trust, I consider the necessity of shifting our relationship with nature, from our disastrously outdated 18th-century perspective of domination to a new, and as yet undefined, context in which our species lives and works in harmony with what we have been given by the world we inhabit.

“Gridwood” (1996) from my book on the Djerassi Resident Artists Program Eighteen Days in June (2000)

“The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It is not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.” -John Steinbeck

“Grace” (1996) from my book on the Djerassi Resident Artists Program Eighteen Days in June (2000)