Corinne de San Jose's fascination with what she calls "dead trees" started with a drawing book her father gave her as a child, teaching how to draw their silhouettes. Amused by the trees' simplicity and awkward twists and bumps, and their being in-between life and actual death, de San Jose had then found the subject of her art. She just didn't know it yet. Her "obsession" was there, which for years meant looking at "dead trees" and collecting them with her camera, but with a focus that was unattached to artistic expression.
But de San Jose's photography, like the trees she loves looking at, finds a way of growing despite the seemingly grim circumstances surrounding it. Learning from a creative rut, not knowing where to take her photography, she finds spring in Some Die Young and Some Die Old, her second solo show. De San Jose's "favorite subject" finally takes root in these images, and though it is many years after that drawing book planted the seeds, her fascination for "dead trees" is finally able to breathe artistic life.
With black-and-white photographs, de San Jose zeroes in on the silhouette of the trees, but more so, their stillness. Dead as they may seem, without the leaves and flowers, which used to define them, the trees still stand. Though they seem but shadows of their former selves, they will overcome the chaos and noise of the city, and will bloom again. Noting this, de San Jose purposely removes the trees' backgrounds to focus on their stillness. And in the silence, the sense of calm resonates, in turn allowing her search for the trees that define her photography to impart more than a feeling. In sifting through the metaphors they bear, de San Jose finds her artistic self. In Some Die Young and Some Die Old, there is new life in places once overlooked.
The photo exhibit opens tomorrow and will run until July 24 at the Silverlens Gallery in Makati City.