Wavelength: Frequencies of Wildfire
2022 | digital infrared photographs
The 2019-2020 summer in Australia was overrun by a megafire that blazed so intensely it could be seen from space. Two years after Black Summer, I traveled to areas impacted by the fires with a camera sensitive to light beyond the visible spectrum. Making photographs and video by recording wavelengths of light typically invisible to human eyes uncovers the uncanny of these burn sites and their subsequent regeneration. Images of these environments depict regrowth in intense shades of blue, orange, and purple, in contrast to charred black trees. I am interested in ways that the effects of climate change can be defamiliarized and made more vivid. While visual information and data about ecological catastrophe are crucial to framing our predicament, there is a need to rework and reimagine representations of it. Can we ‘see’ — and therefore respond — differently to the climate crisis with creative applications of science?
