While thinking of a title for this body of work, I was inspired by a book called Invisible Cities by Italian author Italo Calvino (1923-1985). The book features Marco Polo recounting the cities visited on his travels to Kubla Khan. Through Polo’s narration, he presents his native Venice as fragments of other places. This book’s scenario highlights how people perceive the same place or object in different ways.
Invisible Cities evokes a ‘sense of place’, referring to both the experience in particular locations and how the distinctiveness or unique character of particular localities and regions can be described in different ways.
It could be said that people develop this ‘sense of place’ through experience knowledge of a particular area. A sense of place emerges through:
- knowledge of the history, geography and geology of an area
- an area’s flora and fauna
- legends of a place
- a growing sense of the land and its history after living there for a time
This struck a chord when I was reflecting on my own relationship with Bushy Park and the hawthorns in particular. Each tree tells its own story of ‘being’ a hawthorn. Each has their own identity and features.
Also, before I started my focus on hawthorn, they were (to me and the majority of visitors to Bushy Park) invisible trees – hidden in plain sight. As such, the title for this body of work is:
Invisible Trees: The Hidden Hawthorns of Bushy Park
In addition to this title, I could name each tree after the names of the cities in Calvino’s book, relating it to the particular story. The names in include, Dorothea, Zaira, Anastasia, Tamara & Zora. This concept was sparked by the story of Zobeide, which is:
‘The white city, well exposed to the moon, with streets wound about themselves as in a skein. They saw a woman running at night through an unknown city: she was seen from behind, with long hair, and she was naked.’
(Calvino, I. 1997. pp. 39)
References
Calvino. I. 1997. Invisible Cities London: Vintage.
Jennie Meadows MA Photography 