State of Combustion, 2019
In early 2019, over a two week period a car a night was being set on fire in the streets around where I live. Selection appeared to be indiscriminate; old, new, it didn’t seem to matter. Each new fire escalated communal anxieties, gossip and speculation.
The local news media fed into these tensions with daily front page articles about the fires. Press Photographs of burnt out cars and reporting of victim impact became the daily normal.
To process these events I decided to make my own series of photographs. I set out to create an imagined prelude to the newspaper images.
Attempting to experience the state of mind that requires arson as the only avenue of release. I walked the same streets, over the remains of ash melted plastic and alloys. Moving in the shadows, watching, avoiding being watched, feeling what it was like to be that person with contempt for the boundaries of public and private, immersed in the power of destructive control.