ART 28 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JULY 23-29, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com The walls are painted pine green. You are in the forest. Remain in this sacred space—among branches shooting into the sky, the verticality of the crowns and the wisdom of the mother tree—as long as you like, perhaps with the lines from “Some Trees” in mind. John Ashbery chose that poem for the title of his 1956 debut volume of poetry, and it welcomes visitors at the gate of this show of Jane Olin’s photography. Born in 1939, Carmel-based Olin studied photography with the second-generation members of the f/64 Group. She carries the great tradition of this region forward in her own work, often built as series, and is recognized as an innovator with pinhole and silver gelatin processes. The founder of Salon Jane, a photographic space and group dedicated to Monterey Bay area women artists, Olin shifted toward alternative processes around 2020. That shift produced a show of 36 pieces titled Intimate Conversation, which the artist describes as “my poetic love letter to the trees that define our local landscape.” On view now at the Monterey Museum of Art is a selection from that show—15 pieces, the best of a series that took Olin 15 years to make, as exhibition curator Cydney Payton emphasizes. “We wanted them big, placed sparsely on the walls,” Olin says of the vision she and Payton share. It’s a beautiful exhibition, free of the human form. Trees rule this world. “It explores the complex kinship we share with our local forests,” Olin says. She is interested in the possibility of a language through which humans and trees might communicate. The only trace of human civilization is an apartment building Olin photographed in New York. The image was waiting behind her, and she turned and took it, prompted by Ansel Adams’ famous advice: Always check your back. The result is a striking image—nature asserting itself over the urban environment. The works are archival digital prints made from silver gelatin photographs, originally shot with a Canon EOS 650. Olin worked the series in the solitude of her darkroom, coaxing the images as much as developing them. A companion book is also planned, featuring all 36 works from Intimate Conversation alongside poetry by Meredith Stricker. “I’m a Zen Buddhist, so I like a lot of negative space, or space around things,” Olin says. The prints were originally small; here they appear large, migrated from silver gelatin originals into digital form. “It’s a small show, but it’s an impactful show,” Payton says. She is drawn to displaying objects in an architectural manner, letting the scale and spacing of the room do part of the work. “The understory is about our forest, and trees and the way that they can communicate with each other and are essential to our environment and our existence—how they’re connected through mycorrhizal networks, like mushrooms. “There’s this very poetic part of science that I wanted to connect, using choice words from other people,” Payton continues, adding that Olin has long been interested in the connection between science, meditation and art-making. Most of the original photographs were made in Northern California, though a few come from elsewhere. Olin stops in front of an image of a tree, torn down so that only one third of it remains standing. “It’s a very emotional image,” she says. “It was taken when I was with my husband and my son, and we were on a trail. When something like that happens, when an image calls to me, I tell them, ‘You guys, keep going.’ Then I have to sit with the tree and make the image. They really call to me.” She describes the process itself as a kind of walking meditation: “I have to be in a meditative space. I’ve always known I cannot photograph with people around. So I walk, alone, and then a tree will beckon to me. I just stop. And then some sort of connection happens, and I make the image. This one, for instance—I was in the forest that day, probably two hours, and I just would not leave.” That refusal to leave, more than any technical account of silver gelatin chemistry, is the real subject of Intimate Conversation and Some Trees. Olin’s photographs aren’t simply pictures of trees; they’re records of a woman standing still long enough for something older than her to answer back. In a region defined for a century by grand, sweeping landscape photography, her smaller, stranger act of attention—waiting two hours for one tree to finish saying what it has to say—feels like its own quiet correction. The forest, in her telling, was never scenery. It was always a conversation, and she has simply been willing to listen. Jane Olin: Some Trees is on display at Monterey Museum of Art, 559 Pacific St., Monterey, until Aug. 23.. $15; free/members, students, seniors, youth 18 and under, EBT cardholders. (831) 372-5477, montereyart.org. Nurturing Nature Salon Jane founder shows off the alchemy of her darkroom and the language of trees. By Agata Popęda “I walk, alone, and then a tree will beckon to me.” Jane Olin is the Jane of Salon Jane, a six-member artist collective founded to support female photographers in the area. At 87, she continues working. “Intimate Conversation 34 The Silence After,” is featured as centerpiece of the exhibit. This 2021 piece is made of many textures; its composition is a nod to Japanese aesthetics. DANIEL DREIFUSS JANE OLIN
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