“For millennia the tree has been a symbol of life. Celebrated by most ancient civilizations, the tree has stood for the center of the cosmos and the origin of creation. Represented throughout art and literature, trees feature in the earliest photographs from the 1840s as well as in contemporary works today. This exhibition, drawn entirely from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s permanent collection, presents a range of photographs that reveal various artistic responses to the perennial subject. Documenting primeval forests and cultivated nature, these images explore the tree in its many connotations—as a graphic form, an evocative emblem, and vital evidence of the natural world in which we live.”