Collaborating Partner:

Three Rivers Park District

Artist:

Meghan Duda

Time & Place:

June 2024-June 2025

Crow-Hassen Reserve, Baker Park Reserve, Elm Creek Reserve and Silverwood Park which exist west and north of Minneapolis.

Project Description:

'On Tree Time' offers a glimpse into the future forests of the Three Rivers Park District through restored forest sites in the Crow-Hassan, Baker Park, and Elm Creek Reserves. Across these rewilded landscapes, forestry managers at the Three Rivers Forestry Nursery at Crow-Hassan Park cultivate genetically diverse native trees and work with local ecology to restore woodlands once cleared for agriculture while preparing them for future climatic conditions. The photographs in the series are made with a large-scale, lens-less pinhole camera, requiring exposures from 15 minutes to 24 hours—an intentionally slow, patient process mirroring the decades-long work of restoration as forests are rebuilt on “tree time.”

Goals or Outcomes Achieved:

A central aim of this project was simply to spend time on the land and understand, through presence and observation, the impact the Three Rivers Park District has had in restoring native landscapes. Although I do not live in the region, I returned to the parks repeatedly, often camping and spending multiple days on site. This extended time allowed me to observe shifts in light and season, and to meet with naturalists working directly in these landscapes.

When the photographs were later exhibited at Silverwood Park, I was able to share my experiences and observations with park visitors, and in a small but meaningful way, advocate for the Park from an outsider’s perspective.

What did you learn? Artistically? Administratively? About the community?

I was surprised by the darkness that emerged from the long exposures of the landscape. I might have written the photographs off as “underexposed,” but I came to realize that the slow process of looking extended into the photographs themselves. What I mean by this is that to truly understand these photographs one must look for a long time. As the viewer lingers, the image begins to emerge from the darkness, the values begin to separate, and the photograph reveals itself. The slow process of observation does not end with the making of the image - it extends into the act of viewing. In the end, the work exists as a metaphor for the future - a reminder to slow down and allow the beauty of the world to emerge from the darkness.

Links

https://meghanduda.com/on-tree-time

Quote from the project:

"The imagery is dark and romantic, envisioning a future landscape shaped by memory and return. Once wild, once cultivated, now wild again, the land and photographs exists in a suspended moment where past, present, and future converge." — Meghan Duda

On Tree Time