Past in Focus: Change of Plans

Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on June 28 2012, by Matt Newman

Back in January, I began posting photos in a new series tentatively titled “Past in Focus.” I had an aim of seeking out archived Garden images and recreating those scenes as they exist now–to see in today’s landscape hints of the last century. The photographers and I made the decision to wait until the NYBG was in its full spring growth to set out, though; we figured the pictures would carry more drama and gravity if the contrasts ran high, and now that everything is lush and lively, we come to find out that our well-meaning plan wasn’t quite feasible the way we envisioned it.

Last week, Ivo, Mark and I set out with tripods, cameras, a stack of lenses and a crumpled sheaf of old photo copies in hand. I’m not exactly Man Ray, so the other two did the hard work while I tagged along as a notebook-wielding nuisance; certainly they knew the ins and outs of the Garden’s layout better than I did at this point. After only 10 or 20 minutes and a few head-scratching shuffles around the front of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, we were already stymied. Not only were the spring trees too leafy in places for us to tie in many of the landmarks seen in the original photographs, but the actual landscape of the Garden had changed. Hills had been raised, pathways rerouted, new collections added.

But maybe this operation wasn’t lost so much as changed, and maybe for the better. What were we trying to say with our then-and-now comparisons to begin with? We had planned to focus on the similarities rather than the differences. To show how one hundred years hadn’t drawn us that far from our origins. In many ways, the opposite proves true.

The Garden has changed, but in an explosion of fantastical living shapes far removed from the humble beginnings we see in the pictures. We were walking through an entirely different world than the one the first photographers experienced here, propping up their accordion-box cameras on spindly wooden tripods. So many of the open fields of 1906 have been painted with collections of high-reaching conifers and fanciful garden plots since. The simplistic geometry of the Annual Border is now retired, giving way to the striking lines and jointed angles of the Perennial Garden, and the Conservatory Lawn. The squarish berms seen in the early 20th century were long ago sheared and reshaped into flowing forms.

Maybe the original vistas aren’t there to re-create. But they haven’t disappeared as you might think. They have instead lengthened, shortened, or found new points of perspective for us to discover. Nature has a habit of redrawing its identity from time to time. And in our hours of hiking through the Garden on that clear spring afternoon, our reward wasn’t what we set out for. Rather, we found something better: the sense that this place is constantly becoming more than what it was. The New York Botanical Garden is a living landmark, one that doesn’t exist in a seasonally-colored bubble; maybe its best face is the one that never looks the same.

Below, you’ll see a few of the original scenes we tracked down, some of them recognizable, others completely different from what we expected to find. And that, in the end, made the adventure a success. Because this much we figured out: the NYBG is always a surprise to those who step outside in hopes of finding the same old thing. Nature’s too energetic to be boring.

Maybe these images will hearten the impatient home gardener–the new green thumb anxious for results and fretting over planting everything just so. Sparse plots don’t offer a lot of confidence early on, but green things have a tendency to fill in the gaps for themselves when given enough time. (Sometimes to the point of fearing for the safety of the house. Just ask Ann about the Battle of the Back Yard she faces each weekend.) The Garden might be the example.

I wouldn’t count on this series being down and out just yet, either. There’s been some interest in finding past photos a little closer to the modern day, to show the contrasts and similarities of The New York Botanical Garden without an entire forest springing up in the time between. But I have to wonder if Mark and Ivo will find that kind of challenge a little too easy after last week’s jaunt.