I have been always fascinated by trees as of spectacular manifestations of Nature as well as one of the most long-lived species on this planet - silent witnesses of natural and human history. The tree motif is deeply rooted in our culture and is seen as the most ancient cross-cultural symbolic representation of the Universe's construction and is meaningfully present in world's mythologies, folklore, as well as religions, e. g.: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. Among all the tree species the oak was considered as exceptional. For the ancient Celts (it is not commonly known that they lived in some areas of today's Poland) and the Slavs it was seen as representative of all trees. An ancient man saw it as a powerful symbol of growth, decay and resurrection - a connection between Heaven and Earth; symbol of the God(s) power. My series was taken in North West of Poland, in one of the largest cluster of monumental oaks in the Europe, a place which in the past could have been called a “sacred grove”, or at least “locus amoenus”, and the time seemed to stop there. Interestingly, it is situated not far away from the place, where Polish statehood was born. I wanted to portrait these oaks in their environment by going beyond the human eye visible light spectrum in order to symbolically show the unseen (in terms of our daily perception) and perhaps ask the question of what these trees are silent of in respect of their roots. (this set is a part of larger body of work titled "Trees-Shadows-Dreams")
