Burn. Harri Pälviranta

With climate change, wildfires are becoming more frequent and more intense. They are spreading faster and lasting longer. The wildfires in southern Europe in 2023 appear exemplary of this development – about fourteen percent of the surface area of the island of Rhodes burned just in one week, while the wildfires in southern Italy lasted for months.

These vast and violent wildfires interest me for several reasons. First of all, I am visually interested in the traces produced by burning and heat. Secondly, the translation or adaptation of a burn mark into a photographic representation appears fascinating because it also provides a platform for theoretical considerations, re-evaluation of an idea of a document. Thirdly, I am concerned about the impact of wildfires on our global climate conditions, and humans’ part in their expansion.

I see burnt forests and bushes as indexical signs of the fires. Following this I ask how a wildfire and its traces can be turned into an image, or a series of images. I concentrate on the imprints, traces, vestiges. I rub the burned trees with white cloth, making a kind of charcoal drawings. I make portraits of individual burned trees with a flash, producing a trace of it to a photographic material.

The works are made in Greece, Spain, Australia, Portugal, the USA and South Korea between 2023-2025.

Harri Pälviranta