Paler Ash - Emanuel Cederqvist & Sean Gardiner&

Paler Ash is a collaboration by Emanuel Cederqvist and Sean Gardiner. It traces the changing fate of the ash tree following the onset of ash dieback, a fungal disease currently spreading across Europe, posing a serious threat to the species future. The work documents trees between Öland, Sweden (where dieback was reliably identified in 2003) and Dorset, England (where it was recorded in 2013). These locations – a relative east and west of the geographic range of the tree – act as vague mirrors of each other, reflecting an approximate past or impending future.

Although the origins of dieback remain somewhat ambiguous at present – its spread the result of a combination of things, some arguably natural, others probably avoidable – it is difficult not to see its onset as somehow characteristic of the time we are living through. The work is intended as both document and elegy, simultaneously paying testament to the presence of the tree while hinting at the tangible absence of its loss.

Blackbook Publications, 2024
Hardcover, 136pp
290 x 240mm