When Amina Bech was three years old, she climbed up a large oak outside the house where she lived in Norway. Missing a step, she fell but her rubber boot caught on one of the branches and she ended up hanging upside down by that boot, before being rescued by her mother. Amina made no sound, she just looked at the view up through the branches.
“Three years ago, I began climbing up trees again, trying to recapture that image from my childhood,” says Bech, now a photographer, at the opening of her show “I am Nature” at Trygve Lie Gallery in New York. “The tree carries many themes with it, most clichés—the tree of life, the tree of knowledge and so on. I just like the Jackson Pollockesque view of the branches seen from below looking up.”
Bech’s tree photographs are a series printed on large aluminum circles. The round shape is partly a comment on her profession (Kodak’s first camera—the No.1 Kodak—provided round images) and also a comment on coming full circle by tying her current work to her childhood. The title of the exhibit is derived from Jackson Pollock’s answer to the question “Does nature inspire you?” Pollock answered “I am nature.”
“I am Nature” will run through October 26.
For more information: www.trygveliegallery.com
