Tom Zetterstrom
Tom Zetterstrom’s career spans half a century and includes street photography, photojournalism and fine art photography. Portraits of American Trees has its origins in Tom’s Canaan, Connecticut woods and over a period of 3 decades has expanded from coast to coast. He is the recipient of the 2011 Arbor Day Foundation’s international Public Awareness of Trees Award for his work as a tree photographer and tree preservationist.
Zetterstrom’s fine art series, the Moving Point of View, also derives from an aspect of his early environmentalism opposing super highway expansion through western New England in the 1970’s. Following its defeat, Tom shifted from didactic slide shows to a subjective interpretation of the landscape photographed from behind the wheel of moving vehicles and from trains. In Maine Woods, 1983 we see a nearly cinematic sweep of motion combine with still, clear edges of birches in a roadside grove. Maine Woods was recently acquired by the Farnsworth Museum.
Photographs from his various portfolios are represented in the collections of 43 museums nationally. Tom’s Washington, DC Street Photography was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution, his White Russia portfolio is in the Library of Congress collection, and his Faces, of China, 1981 exhibition was supported and toured by the Yale-China Association.
All photographs are archivally processed gelatin silver prints from film negatives.
