(Photographed 2012-2018, edited 2013-2020) I first photographed a row of strangely humanoid smooth-barked trees along a busy Los Angeles thoroughfare in 2012 while visiting family members who had moved there. On subsequent visits, I realized the trees — which I later identified as Ficus microcarpa 'Nitida,' commonly known as Indian laurel figs — are widely planted throughout the city. A non-native Southeast Asian shade variety, they comprise 5% of the trees in Los Angeles and play an important role in the city's "green infrastructure." From Little Tokyo to Beverly Hills, they endure similar treatment: bearing the scars of interaction with humans — staples, nails, street lamps, bits of torn posters — for decades they have provided a seemingly irresistible surface for graffiti carvers. Lately a fungus threatens to wipe them out within 10 to 25 years, which puts this project in a very different context than when I began — it could become a document of a vanished Los Angeles.
 
Over the years and subsequent visits, my series has gradually grown. The underlying motivation behind my art making in general is to find beauty and surprises in an unexpected place, complexity and layers of experience in something we think we already know, and underlying relationships in what at first glance seems random. I search for a deeper understanding of what natural forms tell you about the particular conditions of the moment, and in the case of the Indian laurel figs, they frequently push back forcefully against the concrete and asphalt that contains them, cantilevering sidewalk slabs and curling their roots over curbs. They're sturdy survivors, bearing the traces of time's passage and the indignities visited upon them, still standing. I highlight their distinctive profiles and gestures by replacing the backgrounds of my photographs in post-processing with a flat color gradient, as if the tree had posed for a studio portrait.