Jessica Hays

 

Wildfires are raging across the western United States, burning up increasingly large swaths of land every year. While fire is a natural part of many ecosystems, the increasing presence of larger, faster, and hotter fires is a reminder of the rapidly changing environment. Living among these fires is a difficult experience, as your home is choked by smoke and threatened by flames.

Made across the western United States, these photographs examine the immediate aftermath of megafires on surrounding communities and what the experience of local fires are like interweaving narratives of personal struggle, climate change, and collective trauma.

These fires affected mine and many other communities. The impending sense of doom and the effects of climate change are inescapable, the experience of a wildfire is all consuming. It crowds out your vision. The pillar of smoke is unmistakable as anything else. Our communities are facing collective traumas as we wait for news about the spread and containment, constantly refreshing web pages and data bases. Families come home to piles of ash right next to intact homes. Wildfires have no mercy, only chance.

The work interfaces with the idea of solastalgia, which describes emotional and existential distress caused by negative environmental change, generally experienced by people with lived experience closely related to the land. Many of the causes of these changes, such and wildfires, drought, or mine contamination create a sense of powerlessness in conjunction with a lowered quality of life or traumatic events. Lands integral to our identity, our livelihoods, and our wellbeing are shifting and changing without notice or control. The day to day struggles of normal life continues on as fires rage outside our windows, setting our lives in a scene of constant distress with orange haze engulfing our homes.