Yan Wang Preston

In 2013, during a long-term photography project conducted along the Yangtze river, British Chinese photographer Yan Wang Preston (born 1976) made an incisive observation: in the small village of Xialiu stood a 300-year-old tree, squarely in the center of a community that was, at the time of her visit, being coerced into moving so that a dam could be constructed. Three months later there was no trace of the village or the tree and the residents had moved farther up the mountain. And the 70-ton tree? It was sold for $10,000 to a hotel in the nearest large city, Binchuan. Preston found the tree, divested of all its branches and leaves and bandaged in plastic, inside the skeleton of the hotel, which was still under construction, like a living sculpture yet to become cognizant of its new surroundings. In China, where new cities are constantly springing up, transplanting nature is big business. In her new photo series Forest, Preston tracks down uprooted trees that have been transferred to concrete deserts, questioning our sense of the meaning of homeland.