“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way.”
— William Blake
Elegy for a Cypress, Pebble Beach, CA, 2013
There’s a certain kind of silence along the cliffs of Pebble Beach, a silence born not of stillness, but of endurance. The wind here doesn’t merely pass through; it shapes, it sculpts, it tells stories. In this haunting image of a lone cypress, the landscape becomes a living chronicle of survival, memory, and grace in resistance.
The tree, its limbs bent and stripped, reaches toward a sky that feels both infinite and intimate. A pair of birds rest upon the bare branches, a momentary stillness amid the eternal movement of wind and time. The composition feels cinematic, yet dreamlike; it pulls us inward, where imagination meets memory.
With this photograph, I try to hold tension between fragility and strength. The tonal range, muted, almost monochrome, evokes nostalgia, a sense that this scene exists halfway between the physical and the spiritual. There’s decay, yes, but also dignity. Like an old soul who has weathered countless storms, the cypress stands as a metaphor for perseverance, identity, and the quiet power of endurance.
My storytelling is never explicit. He offers fragments of light, form, and atmosphere, and allows viewers to complete the narrative with their own emotions. The result is a conversation between artist and observer, a moment suspended between what is seen and what is felt. The image becomes less a record of a place and more a mirror of the human spirit.
For collectors and curators, this work occupies the fertile space between landscape and psychological portraiture. It’s an image that changes with the light and with the viewer’s own memories, timeless, tactile, and deeply human.
Artist’s Statement
In Elegy for a Cypress, I reimagine the coastal cypress of Pebble Beach as both subject and metaphor, a solitary being sculpted by invisible forces. This image embodies the quiet power and lyricism that underlie my work: the merging of natural form and human emotion into something timeless, ambiguous, and profoundly moving.
Rendered in muted monochrome, the photograph carries the tactile softness of memory. The gnarled silhouette of the cypress leans into the unseen wind, its branches reaching like the gestures of an ancient soul. Two birds rest upon its fragile limbs, a fleeting echo of companionship amid solitude. What emerges is not merely a landscape, but an intimate portrait of endurance and transformation.
My images operate in the realm of suggestion, where atmosphere becomes language, and silence holds meaning. Like much of my work, Elegy for a Cypress is both a meditation and an invitation: to pause, to reflect, and to find within nature the contours of our own resilience.
This piece exemplifies the essence of my practice, creating art that transcends documentation to explore the emotional geography of existence, where beauty and melancholy coexist in delicate balance.
🎧 Music to go with the image
Listen to Nikolai Lugansky's hauntingly expressive performance of Rachmaninoff's Elégie. These recordings aren’t just background. They are fuel. If you want to hear the same music that shaped the emotional atmosphere of this image, listen here:
👉 Nikolai Lugansky Performs Rachmaninoff’s Elégie in E-Flat Minor, Op. 3 No. 1 | 150th Anniversary