Nicolai Howalt, OLD TJIKKO, 2019

The tree, Old Tjikko, stands in a deserted landscape on a mountainside at a height of 1,000 meters in Dalarna, Sweden, and with its impressive age of 9,500 years is considered to be the oldest tree in the world. Visual artist Nicolai Howalt has photographed this exceptional spruce, in itself about 5 meters tall. A single negative has become the many different photographs in this book: a total number of 96 variations created on approximately 96 different types of aged analogue light-sensitive photo papers, many of which are long past their expiration date. The result is an almost organic diversity of perception and expression; an aesthetic where the premise of each individual photograph, on par with the original motif itself, has become an integral part of the image-creating process.