STARVED
About the Starved Project
Trest, Czech Republic, 2022
During a 2019 family visit to Czechia, my father pointed towards an empty patch in the middle of a dense forest on a nearby hilltop. Barely noticeable then.
When I returned to Czechia after a 2 year covid break, I was greeted by landscape that was devastated. Dense, 100+ year old forests of Norwegian Spruce were halfway annihilated.
A drive through the countryside revealed the extent of the damage. The magnificent forests, an integral part of Czechia, are falling victim to a tiny bark beetle, no more than half a centimeter long.
I realized I wanted to capture my own, narrow glimpse into this massive problem.
The mechanism driving the destruction is an eight-toothed bark beetle. Historically, simple rain would curb its procreation and keep things in balance. But the drought like summers which are now the new norm in Europe, allow these tiny insects to flourish. The rough estimation is that about 80% of Czechia’s spruce forests are at high risk of disappearing over the next decade. An almost complete transformation of the topography.
Although my creative process was mostly solitary, on occasion I was able to ghost a forester. I still remember the feeling when I saw a mature tree that takes decades to grow cut down, stripped of branches and sectioned into transport ready logs, in a mere 15 minutes by a single person. A very sobering experience to witness.
“Long after the foresters are gone, the deafening noise of cracking wood along with the unceasing burr of the chainsaw cutting through the tree limbs seems to echo through the mangled landscape. As I stand there, surveying the day’s work, I wonder if it’s only reverberating in my head or if it’s the forest actually crying. Then I look down at the orange-red sawdust splattered like blood all over the white snow and think it must be the latter. On my way home, I spot a little silver cross nailed to a tree and realize that some tragic events are of personal nature and some others are simply more collective.”