I’ve been shooting these images for the past 15 years in cities across the USA where curbside Christmas tree recycling is done. 

The idea evolved from a favorite short story by Richard Brautigan “ What Are You Going to Do With 390 Photographs of Christmas Trees” in which he describes a winter car ride in 1964, obsessively photographing discarded Christmas trees and likening them to assassinated President John F. Kennedy and Vietnam soldiers felled in the field.

As I work on the project in a current context, I have come to see them as everything that we hope for and then set aside in the rush towards the ordinary after the magic of the season has dulled. They are modern Memento Mori of the casualties of life and it’s vanities, a quiet example of the commodification of creed.