Community photo of the week: Curbed Christmas trees
on December 29, 2010
Oakland North is continuing with our new feature. Every Wednesday, we will publish a photo submitted by one of our readers. This week’s photo is by Malik Johnson.
Johnson is an Oakland artist who took these photos for a project he has been working on the last ten years called “Resolution.” Every year, once the holidays are over, he takes pictures of discarded Christmas trees around Oakland. In his artist statement he writes:
In the aftermath, the holiday leftovers are usually accompanied by tattered bows, crumpled wrapping paper, broken wishbones, and scattered pine needles.
There remains the tree.
The most decorated symbol of the year is soon reduced to a chore. The Christmas tree is cleared to make way for temporarily displaced furniture. The now withered icon is dismantled, swept away and cast out into the street.
Still, with the New Year comes resolution. The lingering memories transform into the possibilities of the future. The Christmas tree inevitably surrenders to the soil of returning spring.
If you’d like to contribute to “community photo of the week,” just send a favorite photograph taken in Oakland to dara.kerr@oaklandnorth.net with the subject: PHOTO. Please make all photographs 1600 pixels wide, 72 pixels/inch, and in jpeg format.
Photo by Malik Johnson.
Photo by Malik Johnson.
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Oakland North is an online news service produced by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and covering Oakland, California. Our goals are to improve local coverage, innovate with digital media, and listen to you–about the issues that concern you and the reporting you’d like to see in your community. Please send news tips to: oaklandnorthstaff@gmail.com.
