Ablaze explores the rhizomatic relationships catalysed by natural combustion within our environment. Depicting the visibly evident consequences of forest fires due to increasing temperatures. I use experimental photography, specifically cyanotypes and organic matter, to portray the interface between wildfires, ecology, and the image. Highlighting the juxtaposition between the tree’s weighted sacrifice, the protagonists required in planetary life, and the intertwined themes of disintegration, deterioration, and destruction. Fires have displaced people from their homes, animals from their habitats, destroyed landscapes, ended lives…

“If the body is the site of climate catastrophe, how are we to feel?”¹

The work manipulates non-representational media inspired by the abstraction of wildfires, raising awareness of fire’s increasing prevalence. In Ablaze, fire, one of the four 'natural' elements, including earth, water, and air, has been explored through various techniques of elemental media. Light is a key catalyst within this project, a vital element that brings life to cyanotypes. Simultaneously, light is a radiant factor exuded from the fire itself.

With the inundated plethora of global climate catastrophes immortalised on our digital screens, we become numb to the realness of these disasters within our immediate proximity. Epping Forest, in London, is a site that experienced devasting fires in 2018 and is the location for developing the project and methodology. Yet, it is composed to represent the broader concern of wildfire experienced all over the world.

Ash has been symbiotically utilised throughout this project, highlighting the oxymoronic capabilities of a single material, both regenerative and destructive. Ash, a remnant of fire, creates an alkaline solution when mixed with water (producing ash lye). Here, I use ash lye to break down the fibres that make the paper for the cyanotypes while the solution simultaneously disintegrates the cyanotype hue printed on the paper. It strips away the colour, resembling the power of fire, the bleaching of biodiversity, land, history, and life.

¹:Astrida Neimanis, The body is the site of climate catastrophe, 2020. Terra Batida, terrabatida.org/derivas_one.php?id=20.