Paradise Fire
2015
Paradise Fire is an ongoing project that presents a more realist view of the American West, monochrome colors aside. With this work, I continue to use an 8 x 10 field camera – a solitary process that is as taxing as it is meditative. The exhibition’s title refers to a wildfire that burned roughly 2800 acres of Washington State’s rainforest in 2015, an event indicating the severity of our changing climate, and a natural disaster named by pairing two seemingly contradictory words. Antithetical language can reach to articulate the unimaginable, and my pictures endeavor to visualize an enigmatic landscape – a paradise on fire.
After returning to many of the same parks and sites depicted in previous work, my experience of these locations changed; I captured a different perspective, truer in coloration and more candid in composition. My titles list places and dates, and in some instances they disclose a subtext, as in Near the Future Sight of Portal Preserve, a Housing Development, Lone Pine, California, July 2015, a representation of Mount Whitney, or Wildfire in Glacier National Park, St. Mary, Montana, August 2015, an image of a rainbow-hued cloud.
Paradise Fire contrasts nature’s perfection against reality’s flaws through photographs that document settings such as: tourists taking selfies at Yellowstone; landscapes with encroaching forest fires; or, a desert floor scarred by dirt bike tracks. For me, a connection to the people I encounter, along with the associated trappings of technology and terrestrial decline, combine with my continued affinity for the environment --- I arrived at images that consider inevitable change, which simultaneously frame a binary experience, one that is alluring, yet ominous.
My interest lies in the changing American landscape, and this ongoing series reflects my unease. Our land is a direct reflection of human existence – our past, our contemporary lives, and ultimately our impact. I continue to explore, with empathy, these facets of society and the environment, looking to capture surreal moments, in order to better understand the complexities of our existence.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d56a9e21455aa42c64af817514d5748450f4578f067cbc03792f3e7065b267ce/1.-Wildfire-in-Glacier-National-Park--St.-Mary--Montana--August-2015_30--x-38-1-4-.jpg)
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![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7472c73f3be25891b65c7c20873ff6609d5cdee269429afef292f90eb220122b/3.-Canyonlands--Utah-June-2015_48-x-61-1_4-.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9b424faa92bded035d589c699dd630b36ce0843b1f63bbb9def35e816dec27a8/4.-Wildfire-Rising-Behind-Crater-Lake--Oregon--August-2015_30--x-38-1_4-.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5e64c0128c0a65086ec1be887ecb1f749016eadc5217c2182bd7674c7202c49f/5.-Cliff-Erosion--Carmel--California-March-2015_30--x-38-1_4--.jpg)
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