I don't recall the exact occasion when I made this b+w abstraction of the trunk of a humble and ordinary tree in remnant bushland.  I remember  the location though.  I was walking in the local Waitpinga bushland on a poodlewalk with Kayla and it was an intuitive rather than a planned photo. 

I also remember that it  was  made after  I'd started  reading  Matsuo Bashō, the great haiku  poet  (1644–1694), whose self-image  of a recluse/wayfarer  and eccentric was the basis for  the  poetic possibilities in his Oku no hosomichi (The narrow road to the deep north, 1689). I was  reading him in preperation for going on a Basho walking tour  in 2023.     

The time  of the photo would have been sometime during  2023 and so  probably  after  this  post, which was  when  I was  wondering  whether it was worthwhile  to re-start photographing  with 35mm b+w film. 

At the time of that post  I  was aware of the nostalgia and resurgence of analog,  people buying second hand  film cameras (especially in Tokyo)  and Leica's  announcement of  a reissue of the new Leica M6 film camera  along with its remake of the original 35mm Summilux.  I knew that analog photography had  managed to carve out a small but significant niche a dominant digital culture, but realised that a film Leica was a retro artefact -- like a dumb phone.   

 I kept wondering: was it worth continuing with b+w 35mm film? Could I think in terms of black and white whilst on my daily poodlewalks? Did I have the required discipline that photographing  with black and white film imposes on the photographer?

I was reading about Basho's poetics that were based on the earthy, mundane and aberrant and his  aesthetic concept of fûryû that advocates a poetics that places emphasis on eccentricity and unconventionality. Could  photographing mundane objects with a Leica and 35mm b+w film be considered eccentric and unconventional, given the proud and influential Leica tradition of b+w street photographs in the 20th century?