The Woods of Odiorne: Photographs by Effie Malley 2024
We recognize one aspect of the importance of trees in this time of climate change—their role in keeping the natural world in balance by reducing carbon in the atmosphere. At the same time, forests are steadily disappearing, mostly due to our appetite for wood products, including wood as fuel, and our clearing them to make room for planting crops and grazing animals. Climate change also stresses trees and their habitats. We can play a mitigating role, though: we can help by planting the right trees in season as part of an ecosystem. We can tend and water them and help them thrive. We can protect them.
This exhibit of photographs provides no story, no sequential narrative; rather, Effie Malley, the photographer, hopes the group conveys the experience of awe she felt being around these trees she came to know. Trees are important to everyone: as Richard Powers quotes Buddha in his novel, The Overstory, “A tree is a wondrous thing that shelters, feeds, and protects all living things. It even offers shade to the axmen who destroy it.”
Effie notes that many individuals view trees as sentient beings—capable of sensing or feeling—rather than as commodities to consume. Research has reinforced this view, showing that trees communicate, share resources, and care for one another. She hopes that her photographs give you a sense of this.
Join us May 8 from 6:30-8:30 PM for an Artist's Reception. Light refreshments will be provided. Registration not required.
About the Photographer
Effie Malley lives in Portsmouth and makes digital photographs in color and black and white. In college, she studied photography at the University of New Hampshire with Richard D. Merritt. Later she worked at the UNH Photo Services Department and at the UNH Art Museum. She is a member of the New Hampshire Center for Photography and is currently working on photographs that tell the story of climate change. Her photographs of trees have been exhibited at 3S Artspace and French Hall in Manchester. She is a climate activist and a member of the City of Portsmouth Sustainability Committee and Portsmouth Climate Action. See more of her photographs on Instagram @EfMalley.
She wishes to acknowledge the Abenaki and Pennacook Native Peoples whose ancestral homelands she continues to enjoy and photograph.
