Season Five
Season Five is a multi-year project observing forest and ecosystem changes; most recently the impacts of climate-induced wildfires in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that I came to love while living in California. Trekking in the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in late 2021 after the giant fires that summer, I photographed the charred remains of important and compelling forest landscapes. I was then turned back from planned destination of the Tahoe Basin, where intense fires had also occurred several months before, by an extreme storm (an atmospheric river) plowing into the region from the Pacific.
In 2022, I returned California and the Klamath Mountains to continue the project and met with US Forest Service fire mappers, working foresters, and Karuk Tribe environmental managers in the region to learn more about their divergent perspectives on living with fire. A brief artist-in-residence at U.C. Berkley’s Sagehen Research Station followed, where I connected with a climatologist who directed me to regional wildfire high-impact zones. The shear scale of the Western forests and cycle of drought, storms, and fires is daunting. Conflicting cultural and economic views on forest management, agriculture and population settlement, and water policies make for an dauntingly challenging situation.
Back East: Currently, I’m preparing for a different kind of residency; to observe and photograph ancient lowland swamps on the Eastern shore of North Carolina. “Non-source-point” pollutants there cause bacterial blooms earlier each year as average temperatures rise. This new season is the predictably unpredictable consequence of current changes and those yet to come.
