Treemeat

2005-2015
Treemeat.com was one of the first photo sharing blogs (photoblog) on the web. Started in the early 2000s, every photo was scanned from film, every page was hand coded, and photos were posted daily. It was a labor of love, and became a popular fixture of the pre-social media web.

Treemeat, as in wood – the literal meat of the tree – has always been a symbol of the the creative and destructive power we all have in shaping nature to fit our needs. We have crafted the ‘civilized’ world around us from the material we harvest from nature, and observing what we’ve done with that ability has always been at the heart of this work.

It felt fitting to make select images from the early years of Treemeat.com available as the genesis project in the new web3 creator world, reminding us of those early days of exploration and artwork ownership.

1/1 NFTs available on Foundation.





Treemeat, Year 01 (2005)
The first year of Treemeat.com was an experiment, both photographically and technologically. I was finding my way as a photographer, seeking out atypical landscapes and scenarios, finding places of emptiness and calm in large and crowded cities. At the same time, I was building skills as a web developer, developing content management systems for myself and other to display our photo work, and kicking off a trend of daily 'photoblogs'.







Treemeat, Year 02 (2006)
Year 02 of Treemeat saw me move to California, crossing the country multiple times, and was the year I dedicated myself to design and photography full time. The website, treemeat.com began to get more complex as I become a more experienced develepor, employing a color sampling ability that would tailor the color scheme of each page of the site bases on the dominant colors within the photo on display.







Treemeat, Year 03 (2007)
2008 was a big year for digital photography – with the Canon 5D II release – but film was still tops. Digitizing film was a chore, so you had to be serious about it to bother. So I got serious, and started exploring narrative threads and more storytelling. That exploring led to many trips to the edges of cities, where the increaginly blurry edge between civilization and nature continues to provide bizarre juxtapositions.






Treemeat, Year 04 (2008)


PETER BAKER. ANN ARBOR, MICH. 48103