Stockton Oak Trees, JFC

This sleeve with negatives from the Jessica Fong Collection of Dardis negatives, contains about twenty 4×5″ negatives with mostly oak trees as subject.

There is no timeframe mentioned, so I assume that this collection can span quite a period, especially in light of the apartment building in the last negatives.

Joel worked hard to captures these mostly solitary trees in the landscape. He did try a few different camera settings, and/or different film stock, to ensure he got a printable negative.

I’ll be showing these images in pairs to stress the at times subtle differences between them. I know from perusing Joel’s contest submissions, that he received awards for some of these prints. I believe it is this award winning potential of each one of these images, that prompted Joel to keep all these together in a single sleeve.

There is quite a difference between the contrast in the above images. I try to process the negatives in very similar ways, unless a negative is severely under or over exposed.

These roadside oak trees next to a remote dirt road and no major distracting human elements on the horizon, evoke a 19th century feel to these images. They made me think of the work of Leonard Misonne (1870-1943), a Belgian landscape photographer with dreamy images, at times taken in fog.

There’s tule fog on the horizon and the scattering sunlight gives these images their special feel, again, reminiscent of California Impressionism.

Fog is one of those atmospheric conditions that renders surreal images. Joel has many images made during foggy conditions. He was well aware of the potential.

I find these winter tree fog images quite impressive. Would look good on any wall.

The last set of images are taken at the Plymouth Square senior apartments on 1319 N Madison Street in Stockton. Needless to say that the trees take on a whole different dimension in a city landscape.

Although Joel has given up being a professional money making photographer, his work and vision has a fine art feel to it. We’ll observe more development over the years.

Cheers !