Poor Signifier
Poor Signifier (2016)
I have photographed fires in the Woods many times, and none of them ever quite turn out like I want them to.
Building fires was one of my favorite things to do when I often went hiking around in the woods alone many years ago. There was something about the fact that it was a really primal but transient marker of habitation that was appealing to me, that I could mark out a space in such a visible, specific way, yet also that it would be gone within an hour or two without human maintenance and intervention.
There is also a really narrow Habitable Zone around a fire, if you think about it. Get too close and you'll be burned- too far away and you're reaping no benefits of heat and light from the fire. It is a basic marker of Placedness (a human being's desire to have their own place in the world) that is seemingly as old as civilization itself.
So, lighting fires in the woods (and, just to be clear, I knew how to build a fire ring, douse and spread the fire when it's out, build and demolish a fire according to Leave No Trace... this was not a pyromaniac fixation) was like some gestures towards the deep woods- that strange feeling you get when looking at the edge of a forest, especially at night. I don't ascribe spiritual or otherworldly significance to it, I think... there is just a sort of hardwired "heavy consideration" that I think we as humans give to the edge of the forest.
This photo is not quite grasping at that idea. It's making infantile grabbing motions at it, but it is not really reaching with intention and purpose. It's a poor signifier of what I was trying to articulate.
