Art Journal: Witness Trees

Abstract

This essay proposes that Ken Gonzales–Day’s photographic series Searching for California Hang Trees invites one to consider the larger ecosystems in which human violence takes place. Conceived as a performative memorial, the artist’s photographs of trees locate a history of lynching in the California landscape, rooting it quite literally in the oak trees that were harnessed to its brutality. The essay situates the series within a history of landscape photography in the U.S. West, including geological surveys and the Rephotographic Survey Project, to draw its interventions into focus. It argues that in addition to the brutal crimes of lynching, the photographs also bear witness to other forms of violence, including the incursion of white settlers into California during the gold rush and genocidal campaigns against the Native peoples of California. Following Gonzales–Day in focusing on the trees, the essay proposes that Searching for California Hang Trees encourages viewers to consider the other-than-human life forms that racialized violence also affects.