Sarah Grew

Artist Statement

This body of work, the Ghost Forest, grew out of my concern about the dramatic effects of climate change now visible in many parts of the world. In the western U.S., wildfires turn our sky yellow-gray from smoke, it rains ash and leaves all living creatures unable to breathe, every summer. In a state of mourning over the blackened land, I began to collect ash from the fires. Carbon, the fundamental building block of life, and the remains of a fire. Holding blocks of charred wood in my hands, I realized I could create carbon prints, transforming the soot into recorded images of the forests themselves. 

After extensive research and experimentation, I am now making prints from the ash of many wildfires with visits to more fire sites in my plans. Carbon print is considered the most archival of all photographic printing processes with an estimated life of 10,000 years. Carbon does not fade. Instead, the burned remains of the trees become photographs, in hopeful anticipation of the natural regeneration after fire. My process and its resulting prints, with their frilled edges and torn emulsion echo the way natural fire cycles can surmount devastation to provide nutrients to the soil, force a pinecone to disperse its seeds, or shape the landscape, in stark contrast to the extreme intensity and size of the fires that are now common. 

In working on this project, I often feel I am not taking or printing photographs so much as letting the ash release its knowledge. Since I noticed small shifts of tone in the blacks of different tree species, I have begun to be careful about my collections, noting where the ash comes from and only using material I can identify. In this group of prints I have used only ash from Oregon, specifically, the Eagle Creek Fire, the Holiday Farm Fire, the Jones Fire and an Ochoco Mountains fire. The photographs show us the beauty being lost to human negligence and the climate crisis.

Sarah Grew | Eugene, OR

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