Fires of the Anthropocene also serves as a picturing of ecology, extending past the anthropocentric and into the biocentric, showing the healing and aftermath of fire-effected forests, much of which surrounds Moving Parts Press. Regrowth in one of the most expansive redwood forests, Big Basin, has been a large component of the work. Photography is a powerful medium in an era of a catastrophic climate breakdown, and more specifically the geological age of fire; however, it can be a double edged sword in the way that it fits into the capitalist nexus and furthers climate denial. Burning aesthetics is under much scrutiny, with research suggesting that images of fire “offer only a privileged sort of distanced voyeurism and a failure to capture the momentousness of loss, while providing a misleading visual field of aesthetic contemplation.” Through Fires of the Anthropocene, I have made sure to avoid the perpetuation of burning aesthetics, being sure not to glorify fires. Through this subversion, I acknowledge both human loss and the costs to the web of life, and biodiversity, that sustains all human beings.
