Portraits of American Trees: The Photography of Tom Zetterstrom

View a gallery album from Portraits of American Trees. Read features published in The Berkshire Eagle.

Fine arts photographer Tom Zetterstrom exhibited three-dozen gelatin silver prints from his "Portraits of American Trees" portfolio in the Garden's Leonhardt Galleries, from Sept. 17 through Oct. 31, 2021.

Zetterstrom’s photographs are represented in the collections of over 40 museums nationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and in the Library of Congress “Changing American Landscape” holdings, as well as in numerous private and corporate collections. 

In his 40-year quest across North America, Zetterstrom has gathered images of innumerable species from a wide range of topographies and ecosystems. As forests ecosystems decline, he continues to search for the most memorable trees, those “curious survivors slowly rising like giants through the centuries”. 

“Zetterstrom’s portraits of trees partake in a tradition whose roots lie deep in nineteenth-century photography and painting,” wrote Charles S. Moffett, former director of the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. “(His) images reflect moods and ideas that are at least indirectly related to British and American Romantic traditions. He has both built a bridge to the past and created a body of work that fully reflects a particular late-twentieth century sensibility.”