cultIvAtIng dIscomfort 155For all its brutalities, tree- planting is also a coming- of-age experience
for many young Canadians and a first attempt for most at communal living.
This seamless relation between the intense rigors of planting life and the
social bonds shaped through it are stunningly captured through Canadian
artist Sarah Anne Johnson’s exhibit Tree Planting (2005) (fig. 5.2). Moving
between photography and still vignettes crafted through small clay figures
and fabricated landscapes, Johnson’s work charts the intensities, rigors, and
passions of life in the bush. She captures the wildness of humans and the
magic of flora and fauna that persist in and around intentional ecological
catastrophe. In her piece The Buffer Zone (fig. 5.3), she represents from an
aerial view a picturesque Canadian highway cutting through forest. Yet she
reveals this forest to be an illusion crafted for highway passengers who can-
not see that just beyond the tree line lies ecological devastation. Through
an expanse of felled timber that extends beyond the borders of the image,
Johnson exposes the hidden life of the clear- cut. Across her work, humans
are represented both as extensions of the natural world and in stark contrast
5.2 Collective labor: replanting saplings in the wreckage of clear- cut forests.
Sarah Anne Johnson, Planting Trees, 2004. Chromogenic print, 11 × 14 in. Printed
with permission of the artist.