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For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to the edges of things. The last house on the block, the point where town ends and country begins, the place
where the planned, manicured garden gives way to the wild, random one. That often vague, sometimes razor sharp point where one thing ends and another begins.
Out in the natural world there are few edges as compelling as that of tree line. That point in the landscape where arboreal reach is exhausted and the big sky resurrected. Be it on mountainside, desert plain or rugged coastline, the place where trees make their final stand is an enchanted one indeed. While the environmental factors responsible for halting the growth of trees across these three disparate geographical settings differ, the result, an environment rich in beauty, carved of suffering, does not.
Exposed and vulnerable, edges are where lines converge and conflict dwells. In this case where the call of the forest is met head on by the response of the Great Wide Open. And it was here, amid the thinning air, insufferable heat and pounding surf, that the combined internal forces of imagination and emotion were ignited into reverie by the external perceptions of the eye, making possible the discovery of one small part of the world that, at least for the split second it took to open and close the camera's shutter, was all but perfect.
My aim in the creation of this work was to travel to lesser known locations along the northern California and Oregon coast, deserts of southern California and Sierra Nevada and White mountains of California and more recently, the mountains and deserts of Utah and capture, what is for me, the essence of the particular and unique beauty I encountered there. I was interested in specificity. A specificity that comes only after a certain degree of intimacy is attained. I eschewed dramatic skies and other momentary flashes of brilliant light in order to emphasize the timeless beauty of a particular scene or place without temporal distraction.
In a world that seems to be spinning out of control, hope and solace and ultimately redemption, can still be found in nature. That the primordial splendor of these unique places predates the arrival of modern man (and has survived in spite of him) and, with any luck, will postdate his departure as well, is a notion both profound and comforting. To witness such a lasting endowment, if only briefly, is at once humbling, exhilarating and liberating.
Tim Goodman
Berkeley, California
October, 2004
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