High Severity

cyanotype toned with a cycle of ponderosa pine bark, ponderosa pinecone, and wood ash (submerged for one month), edition 1/1

Supression

cyanotype toned with a cycle of ponderosa pine bark and ponderosa pinecone (submerged for two months), edition 1/1

Resiliencecyanotype toned with a cycle of ponderosa pine bark, ponderosa pinecone, wood ash, and ponderosa pinecone 1/1

Low Severitycyanotype toned with a cycle of ponderosa pine bark, ponderosa pinecone, and wood ash, edition 1/1

Growthcyanotype toned with ponderosa pine bark and ponderosa pinecone, edition 1/1

Origincyanotype toned with ponderosa pine bark, edition 1/1

A Record Records More Than Yearssingle channel video with ponderosa pine forest soundscape, 3 minutes, 23 seconds

Artist Statement:

A photograph of a burnt forest can evoke fear or uncertainty, but these visual records are human fragments of an ecosystem’s history. Tree rings are not only archives of environmental events beyond their age, such as droughts and wildfires, but also a bridge to multispecies ways of understanding. In this work, I immerse images in toning baths from ponderosa pine bark, pinecones, and ash. Through the tannins, I trace the relationship between the photograph as record and the record of forests, aligning these tonal frequencies with tree ring data and forest soundscapes. This collaboration with the narratives of fire-adapted ecosystems emphasizes historical resilience and the integral role of fire.

Artist Bio:

Alexis Joy Hagestad is an interdisciplinary artist who uses lens-based media and multispecies collaboration. Raised in Missoula, Montana, she was profoundly shaped by the diverse landscape surrounding her. Her research uncovers often-overlooked narratives across species, exploring ecological and personal grief while investigating the interconnectedness of all living beings. Alexis holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design and is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate in Photography, Video, and Imaging at the University of Arizona, where she expects to graduate in the spring of 2026.

Scientists Statement:

DENDROCHRONOLOGY

(den-droh-kruh-NOL-uh-jee)

Trees record more than their age.

“Dendrochronology” is the science of using annual tree rings to reconstruct the past. The width, structure, and chemistry of each ring can preserve evidence of growing conditions, drought, injury, and disturbance. In fire-adapted forests, trees can also record individual fires.

When a low-severity fire damages part of a tree without killing it, the tree may continue growing around the injury, preserving a fire scar within its rings. By comparing scars across many trees, scientists can determine the year, and even the season, the fires occurred and reconstruct centuries of fire history.

Tree rings can also preserve evidence of drought and forest establishment, while culturally modified trees can record generations of human relationships with these same landscapes.

Thousands of trees across New Mexico contain these records. In ponderosa pine forests, it is not uncommon to find old trees and stumps that survived 10, 15, or even 20 separate fires between the 1600s and 1800s. Each scar records a disturbance; the next ring records survival.

Together, these trees reveal forests once shaped by frequent, predominantly low-severity fire. But beginning around 1900, many of those records abruptly change as grazing, land use, and systematic fire exclusion interrupted frequent burning. In nearly all cases, tree samples stop showing scars from trees for all of the 20th century. Without regular surface fires, many forests became denser and accumulated woody fuels, changing how subsequent fires behave.

Like the cyanotypes in this artwork, a tree is both material and record. The bark, needles, wood, rings, and scars carry traces of the conditions that formed them. Dendrochronology gives us a way to read those traces—not simply as a record of years, but as evidence of the changing relationships among climate, people, forests, and fire.

PHOTOS BY ALEX CANCRO