An Essay on Clare Hewitt’s
Everything in the Forest is the Forest
Written by Tess Foley
The decision to write about Everything in the forest is the forest came about naturally. In September, the author of the work, Clare Hewitt, became my tutor. She is generous with her openness about the work and through every insight, I have developed a deeper interest in it. A month later, I came across an open call for essays on the ‘future of photography’. Eager for opportunities that might secure myself a future in photography, I began to research. Which is to say that I went to the office at university in search of help.
Everyone, everyone, whose advice I sought that day brought up Clare's name. It was an overwhelming consensus. I felt as though I had taken the temperature of the room and in doing so had discovered an endemic fever. Anyone orbiting closely enough to the artist, including myself, had caught the same enthusiasm and carried equal certainty that this evolving work was bound to be transformative. There is an urgent reason to be captivated by its subject and its methodology. It is of a rare calibre of photographic work that acknowledges that the planet is dying and attempts to respond. In writing this essay, I hope to evoke the project in its full, tantalising context, and continue to spread its influence. In her interview with Musee Magazine, the artist shared one of her favourite things: "Robin Wall Kimmerer reading Braiding Sweetgrass as an audiobook" (Hewitt, 2024). Having started this process by listening to that audio book, I would like to start this essay by quoting a simple message from it that aptly describes my motivation for writing this piece.
"our relationship with land cannot heal until we hear its stories"
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 2013
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 2013
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