June 15th | Following Fire: Documenting a Forest's Uncertain Future
In September 2020, the Holiday Farm Fire, driven by fierce east winds, burned 173,000 acres along the forested McKenzie River canyon of Oregon. Two months later, David Paul Bayles and Fred Swanson began a photography project to document the stark beauty of the burned forest and its vibrant response to fire.
Shaken after witnessing the trauma of hundreds of homes burned to the ground, they combined David’s artistic sense of form and color with Fred’s scientific focus on biological and physical processes shaping forest history. They emerged with a new view of fire based on dozens of site visits together. The result is a collection of works variously employing fine art techniques, a chronosequence approach to tracking change over time, and groups of images (typologies) centered on intriguing qualities of the blackened landscape. These photographs and text weave a complex story of forest resilience – retention of carbon, nutrients, and abundant life – countered by the challenges posed by a legacy of land use in an age of climate uncertainty.
The suggested donation for this virtual event is $5.00, click here to donate what you wish. To register to attend this event, click here to sign up on Zoom. This event will be recorded.
Please email info@wildlingmuseum.org or call (805) 686-8315 with any questions.
About the Speakers
David Paul Bayles | Photographer
David currently lives and photographs in western Oregon, where highly efficient industrialized tree farms supplanted the massive old-growth forests many decades ago. He is currently working on a long-term project with disturbance ecologist Frederick J. Swanson, documenting the forest recovery after the massive 2020 Holiday Farm Fire in the McKenzie River watershed.
His photographs have been published in numerous magazines including Orion, Nature, Terrain, Audubon, Outside, Los Angeles Times Magazine, and others. Public collections include The Portland Art Museum, Santa Barbara Art Museum, The Bibliotheque Nationale, The Harry Ransom Center, Wildling Museum, and others. His book, Urban Forest, Images of Trees in the Human Landscape was chosen by The Christian Science Monitor as one of their seven favorite books of 2003. The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley created the David Paul Bayles Photographic Archive in 2016 as a permanent home for his entire life’s work.
Learn more about David Paul Bayles’ work at www.davidpaulbayles.com or follow him on Instagram at @davidpaulbayles.
Frederick J. Swanson | Ecosystem Scientist
Fred Swanson is a retired ecosystem scientist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service and a Senior Fellow with the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word, based in Oregon State University. As part of Spring Creek, he has facilitated the engagement of writers and artists with the science programs and wild landscapes of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest and Mount St. Helens in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest. Trained as a geologist and specializing in the study of disturbance agents in forest ecosystems and watersheds (wildfire, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions, clearcutting, and forest roads), it has been natural to connect with human disturbance agents - poets and artists. Some of the outcomes of these collaborations are reflected in the books Danger on Peaks (Gary Snyder, Counterpoint, 2004), In the Blast Zone (Goodrich and others, Oregon State University Press, 2008), and Forest Under Story (Brodie and others, University of Washington Press, 2016).
This program is offered in conjunction with the Wildling Museum’s current exhibition, Fire & Ice: Our Changing Landscape, the Wildling’s contribution to the Environmental Alliance of Santa Barbara County Museums. Formed in 2020, the Alliance is a collective of 12 museums, a zoo, and a botanic garden across Santa Barbara county that seeks to combine their impact to raise awareness about environmental issues through focused exhibitions, media campaigns, and educational programming.
The Alliance’s inaugural project—Impact: Climate Change and the Urgency of Now (April-September 2022)—invites visitors to all participating institutions to delve deeper into the complex and vexing challenge that is climate change.
Learn more about the group’s many offerings at www.sbmuseumsalliance.org.
The Wildling Museum’s ongoing Zoom programming is sponsored by Montecito Bank & Trust.