Fake Plastic Trees: Photos of Cell Phone Towers in Disguise

By Judy Berman

June 4, 2012

It’s impossible — or, at the very least, it’s been impossible for us — to look at Robert Voit’s New Trees series without beginning to hear Thom Yorke singing, “The green plastic watering can / For her fake Chinese rubber plants…” But although they do indeed depict fake plastic trees, Voit’s photos may be even more surreal than the environment Radiohead conjures. For this ongoing project, the Munich-based photographer captures cellphone towers around the world that have been camouflaged as trees and other plants in a bizarre attempt to compensate for the eyesore they create. “Classified thus as unique objects, formally these fake trees take on an absurd dynamism which creates a need for natural artificiality,” Christoph Schaden explains in a description of the project. Click through to see a few of our favorite images from the series, which we discovered via Booooooom, and visit Voit’s website to see the rest.

Photo credit: Robert Voit