Amanda Sauer

Signed copies available from photo-eye
Available at Printed Matter

Here is a tree, imagined as a grandfather clock, in a last remnant of the native swamps of Washington DC. Photographed from 2015 - 2021, this project documents the aftermath of an invasive beetle that killed nearly all of this forest’s cover. Almost every ash tree in North America faces a similar fate.

With each repeating frame the tree slowly decays, colors change with rotating seasons, and a ribbon pendulum keeps irregular time by the wind. This work quietly mourns the death of one tree to honor that loss, replicated hundreds of millions of times across all ash trees, serving as an index to the mass extinction facing so much of our natural world.

To Measure Time features a screen printed cover and hand-sewn binding; each copy is a little unique. It is made with sustainable materials and is compostable so that it may also become dirt again.

To Measure Time
Self-published by Amanda Sauer, 2022.
10”x 8”  with sewn binding, 15 color images, 32 pp.
Cover screen printed by Beth Hansen.
Edition of 100.

Funded by the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities.
Purchased by the Museum of Modern Art library.