PHOTO BY LISA VOLLMER
TOM ZETTERSTROM PHOTOGRAPHY by Mike Cobb Photograph of Tom by Lisa Vollmer Tom Zetterstrom is a fine arts photographer from Canaan, Connecticut. His work has been acquired by 43 museums nationally including the Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, the Library of Congress and numerous private collections. Zetterstrom’s life as an artist and environmentalist has roots as deep as the trees he photographs. He grew up in Canaan helping his family manage their wooded property. His parents were immigrants from Sweden, his father a forester. Cutting, pruning, and caring for trees instilled a deep appreciation for nature from an early age.
“My fascination and concern for trees emerged while working with my arborist father during the period of extensive loss of the American elm due to the local invasion of Dutch elm disease in the 1960’s,” Zetterstrom says. After graduating from Housatonic Valley Regional High School, Zetterstrom earned a BA in sculpture from Colorado College and pursued graduate studies in photography at Pratt Institute in the late 1960’s. As alternative service to going to Vietnam, he taught photography in the inner city of Washington DC from 1968-1970. The emergence of Earth Day and the environmental movement were inspirational, but it was the pro-
20 • SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2021 THE ARTFUL MIND
posal to expand Route 44 and Route 7 into four lane super highways cutting across Western New England and through his family’s property that kickstarted his activism and helped spur his photographic technique. Determined to protect his family’s land and realizing the potential impact of highway encroachment on the Litchfield and Berkshire hills, Zetterstrom set out with his camera to document the impact of over-reliance on automobiles. Armed with slideshows showing the threat to local landscapes, Zetterstrom lectured from Connecticut to Vermont in concert with numerous environmental organizations and played a key
