Tree Tops Tall

Book excerpt: Tree Tops Tall is a series of pictures made by Neil Drabble over the course of the last few years. It is a collection determined not by the type or site of the trees photographed but instead by the fact that tree tops against a bright sky provide a motif for a certain state of mind, for a formal expression of the self. Each picture has been shot from the standpoint of a child, looking upwards with awe at the wonder and grandeur of the natural world--a perspective similarly communicated by book's large format and its uninterrupted sequence of 40 vivid color images, each spread across a double page. Applying his particularly intimate and studied approach, Drabble has produced a body of work that emphasizes the aesthetic pleasures of seeing and the boundless possibilities of finding beauty in our surroundings.