McCoy Wynne’s The Urban Forest brings together a series of photographs that picture the ‘greening’ of the urban environment in the north west of England. The forest of the title suggests a density of mature, vertical trunks overhung by green, leafy canopies: a land type in which trees are the dominant feature. Whilst the tree is the intended subject of these pictures, it battles to become the subject; it struggles to be seen.
This on-going photo project by Stephen McCoy and Stephanie Wynne sits within a particular strand of British colour photography that explores man’s impact on the land that exists at the edges of places. The Urban Forest comments not on the erosion of a natural landscape, but on man’s monumental attempt to insert nature back into a hard, urban landscape that has very nearly choked any opportunity for nature to flourish.
The Urban Forest has evolved from a commission by The Mersey Forest to record managed tree planting schemes across Cheshire and Merseyside. The cages and wooden frames that appear to further confine the trees are enclosures and props that offer some protection for saplings during early growth. Far from being campaigning, the pictures invite us to look again at an underdeveloped feature in an often overdeveloped, crowded, and cluttered urban landscape.
Julia García Hernández