#afterthefire #daybyday A Visual Diary
#afterthefire #daybyday – a visual diary
A personal response to fire, loss, care and regeneration following the devastating Australian summer bushfires of 2019/2020.
Bird watering station December 31st 2019. Photo by Julie Vulcan
Winner of People’s Choice for the Photovoice: Renewal and Resilience exhibition.
A Wingecarribee Shire Council Social Recovery Sub-committee Project in collaboration with the Southern Highlands Foundation and Fireaid 2020
The day before summer solstice in the midst of the fire season a bushfire roared through the bush home I share with my partner, trees, plants, fungi, critters and creatures. Although we had prepared for this event as best we could we had feared the worst. The winds changed direction three times, the fire burned back on itself and its flames left little untouched. The bush was incinerated. We lost our storage and workshed. Yet our modest house survived despite fire licking at its concrete edges. Five days later we returned to live in our miraculous marooned house amidst a sea of ash to attend to the slow care of our once bush home.
#afterthefire #daybyday began on Instagram on the first day of January 2020 as a visual diary. With my camera lens as buffer the initial documentation helped process the drastic change. Quickly it shifted to a heightened awareness and curiosity in the different ways plants, fungi, critters and creatures were responding to this same change. Over time it has become an archive of lessons learnt from a regenerating bushland.
Click on images to enlarge and for further text
I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work, the Gundungurra and Tharawal peoples and remember that sovereignty was never ceded.