Every Tree in Town
I walked every street in the town of Willimantic, Connecticut, and made 1,017 photographs of 3,128 spruce trees. Blue and Norway spruce trees are not native to the region; however, they are a living link to the city’s once booming industrial past. Willimantic once boasted some of the largest textile mills in the world and many of the thousands of workers came from countries in Northern Europe where spruce trees grow wild. The mills are closed, most of them razed, the population has dwindled, the demographics shifted, yet the trees have continued to be an important icon in the landscape.