Images taken after the Canberra Fires 2003

After the fires in Canberra on January 18 2003 I spent a few hours each day taking photos of the devastation around me. I took hundreds of photos in the months afterwards and since I am not a photographer could not make sense of why I had to walk and walk and walk the district every day. One morning I realised that this activity was me trying to make sense of the experience and there is simply no way to make sense of the tragedy. Four people died a horrible death, nearly 500 houses were lost, 2000 gardens were lost, a forest was lost and Canberra was changed forever. With the exception of family snap shots of our own garden recovering. I haven’t taken a photo in the district since that morning.

These are a few images from the many films I exposed during that period. There was a painful exquisite beauty in some of the textures discovered on those mornings. Images of peoples burnt out houses I have not put online as I felt that each home has its own story and placing them online was an invasion of their lives at a time when residents of Weston creek were trying to recover from horror.