Perennials

Perennials

At the end of summer 2020, not long after the first London lockdown was lifted, I returned to Bucharest with my wife and our then 7 months old daughter. With the Covid-19 pandemic raging on but this time around being able to move freely outside, we spent autumn & winter taking long daily walks in several central parks.

It’s during these times of mundane repetition that I started noticing trees covered in Hedera helix, the common ivy. First one trunk, then another one and very quickly this unseen forest captured my imagination, becoming a focal point of exploration. While the plant’s choice of trees to grow on seemed random, it turns out that ivy tends to grow most on trees that are already diseased or in decline. In this sense, these strange new trees are in my mind survivors, unlikely symbols of regrowth in the new post-pandemic world.