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October 25, 2013
Jane Fulton Alt's work in The Burn---a series of images of a controlled prairie burn---take on an added significance in the light of the recent bushfires in NSW, Australia.
Jane Fulton Alt, untitled, The Burn, 2007
Alt says that:
A controlled burn is deliberately set; its violent, destructive force reduces invasive vegetation so that native plants can continue to prosper. The elements of the burn—the mysterious luminosity, the smoke that both obscures and reveals—suggest a liminal space, a zone of ambiguity where destruction merges with renewal.
For those living living in Australia these same photographs also speak to a much darker narrative, that of the wild bush fires. Uncontrolled wild fires can quickly become savagely destructive, literally destroying hundreds of homes in one fire season. Even when control fires are needed, like those photographed by Alt, these have not always burned as planned, if they get out of control they can burned thousands of acres and a few homes.
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