Disaster
Drove up early yesterday morning from Malibu where I am staying to Santa Barbara to charter a flight over the fire damage in the towns around Ventura where the forest fires were last fall. We also flew over Montecito where the mudslides were.
Think scorched earth and devastation with pockets of homes completely preserved. Odd.
The fires progressed from above in the hills back behind where the population centers are, but also threatened orchards, vineyards and horse farms, as well as homes.
In places, fire came right over Highway101 to the sea
(the darker areas here were caused by the fire as it jumped over the highway).
The mudslides in Montecito happened because the vegetation burned above the town, allowing the rain to flow down the valleys like a river, scouring and loosening the dirt.
some homes flooded and appearing submerged by the mud. Two story homes with just the roof left.
The fire damage looking as if from a blast zone. How terrible to know this was coming towards you and powerless to stop it. All your worldly possessions and the small things: pictures, momentos from an earlier time, an anniversary, a wedding, a funeral. Gone in an instant. Watching your home catching fire and running to escape with your life and little else.
I wonder how many negatives or digital files went up in smoke, how many prints?
Related series
Moab, Utah 2010
In the sping, 2010, while on sabbatical leave from my teaching position, I spent three weeks in Moab. I had been through there years before, and had photographed in black and white 8 x 10, but had never spent more than a couple of days there. It was wonderful. Moab gets very very hot in the summer but in March it is perfect. The days were long and the temperature cool at night. I drove, hiked and photographed. I also shot aerials (some of those you can see in the Rock Sand and Water series).
The final portfolio from Utah is about 25 prints made on 25 x 17 inch Harmon paper.
Salton Sea, CA 2012
I made these pictures in the winter of 2012. Although the use of color in this way isn’t new I wanted to emphasize the bizarre color of the bodies of water near the edge of the lake. The Salton Sea is a man made disaster of epic proportions and I felt an unconventional approach was appropriate here.
The prints are 21 x 14 inches
Related blog posts
Hershey
Hershey PA 1997 Part Two
