Synopses & Reviews
Munich-based photographer Robert Voit has discovered a new kind of tree that is sprouting up all over the world: the cellular phone antenna tree, made from steel, fiberglass and plastic, molded to resemble a real tree, and clad with fake branches and leaves. Dubbing these weird sore thumbs new trees, Voit has found all kinds of specimens--pine, palm, cypress, cactus--throughout the world, in deserts or in the middle of newly planted forests, in fields and parking lots, next to highways or in housing developments. The artificiality of these new trees readily declares itself--they are necessarily taller than most trees, their antennae are often visible through the leaves, or the trunks may be marked with warnings to keep away--and even without these clues they stick out from their surroundings as not quite right, like Stepford wives of the arboreal world. Voit's photographs are composed with deliberate beauty, and the contrast he achieves between tree and sky is especially well judged, enhancing the atmosphere of artifice within these otherwise serene landscapes. Voit traveled throughout the U.S., South Africa and Europe to compile this volume, a sort of postindustrial arboretum that is at once fun and alarming to peruse.
Robert Voit was born in Erlangen, Germany, in 1969. He studied under Thomas Ruff at the Dusseldorf Art Academy and with Gerd Winner at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
Synopsis
Robert Voit has discovered a completely new species of plant that he calls "new trees" - cellular phone antennae of steel, fiberglass and plastic, camouflaged as trees. The unusual new life form is now at home all over the world. There are pine trees, palm trees, cypresses, cacti and deciduous trees. Some are in the desert or in newly planted forests, others in fields and parking lots, next to highways and in housing developments. They seek fertile ground near technical facilities; many are surrounded by fences. In the USA, South Africa and throughout Europe, Voit photographed the antenna trees and put them together in an arboretum, a very special botanical garden full of peculiar woods. The viewer of Voit's photographs will look at the world another way in the future and ask: "What is real and what is illusion?"