When these hauntingly beautiful studies of trees were first exhibited in France they were hailed as 'an achievement in the realm of photography that makes his work equal the highest moments of painting', and they attracted the novelist John Fowles with their powerful simplicity and their ability to see nature as even paintings could not: 'In many ways painters did not begin to see nature whole until the camera saw it for them; and already in this context, had begun to supersede them'.