Tree of Life, Portland Japanese Garden

• Photographer
  Nicholas Dunn

In Portland’s Japanese Garden, a laceleaf Japanese maple arches like living calligraphy. Shaped for decades in the niwaki tradition, its twisting limbs carry the seasons—fresh spring green, deep summer shade, and, each autumn, a burn of copper and flame. Often called the Tree of Life, it embodies wabi-sabi and mono no aware: beauty in age and change. Seen from beneath the canopy, the branches net the light and frame pond, moss, and shrubs—a small world held under one tree.

Nicholas Dunn began photographing at age ten, inspired by his father and grandmother. From the Kansas plains to landscapes abroad, he developed a style rooted in abstraction, where nature reads like drawing or design. By eighteen, his work earned international recognition, including multiple honors at the International Photography Awards with a second place in Architecture/Historic. Through fire, water, ice, and land, Nicholas seeks to reveal the patterns and fleeting visions etched by the earth itself.