Horses panic as a fire burns near Canberra, Australia

Brook Mitchell, Australian

Horses panic as a fire burns near Canberra, Australia, 2020

Sydney-based photographer Brook Mitchell’s images of the Australian bushfires and their aftermath illustrate the surreal visuals of a land ravaged by fire. The 2019-2020 fire season, thought to be exacerbated by climate change, was one of the most devastating in Australia’s history, destroying some 2,000 homes and killing about 30 people. The fires also claimed unnamed numbers of animal victims, both wild and farm animals like the horses fleeing flames at Tallabrook Lodge near Canberra. Besides calls for a better climate change response, Australian activists have expressed hopes for a return to aboriginal practices of controlled burns and fire prevention, which could provide a solution to future fire threats. Label by Sarah Roberts

Containment Series No. 64

Samantha Fields, American, born 1972

Containment Series No. 64, 2009 Samantha Fields is an artist based out of Los Angeles and is a professor of art at California State University, Northridge. Fields presents the viewer with images of mysterious manufacture, she claims that “I Paint atmosphere with atmosphere.” She lets the atmosphere create her painting with no touch of hand, no texture of paint. She sprays coat after coat of vaporized acrylic paint onto super smooth canvas. The wildfire paintings are based on her own photographs and take hundreds of layers to create the paintings. Her work makes you feel like you are witnessing the fire and drawing the viewer into the cloud of smoke. It is almost sublime in its composition and invokes a sense of mass destruction. Label by Isabel Schreur

Senior Center Sign with COVID-19 Information Surrounded by Flames

Noah Berger, American

Senior Center Sign with COVID-19 Information Surrounded by Flames, 2020

In this picture, Noah Berger truly captures the horror of what Californians experienced in the summer of 2020 when both wildfires and the COVID-19 pandemic swept through their communities. The sign is meant to encourage and inform people to stay safe against the virus, but the flames surrounding it counteract this idea, asking the question of whether we really are safe when our communities and homes are going up in flames. The daunting reality of this image is that it captures two simultaneous catastrophes, both of which have the power to literally take their innocent victims’ breath away. Behind the sign advising people to “wear a mask,” smoke can be seen filling the air giving an irony or double meaning to the sign; you should wear a mask to prevent the spread of COVID and to protect your lungs from the wildfire’s smoke. Label by Lindsey Smith

Owl on Malibu Beach during the Woolsey Fire

Wally Skalij, American

Owl on Malibu Beach during the Woolsey Fire, 2018

This work of photography was captured by Wally Skalij on the beach in Malibu,

California. It shows a tiny owl sitting on the beach as the Woolsey Fire approaches. This owl was run out of its home by wildfires and it is seeking the beach for clean air. This image can be used to exemplify the issue of refuge without refuge. For the owl is displaced from its home and is unable to return as well as being unable to survive on a beach. Therefore, he is a temporary survivor, but will ultimately face death due to environmental degradation. This speaks to the larger issue of not only the death of individual animals being an issue in regard to environmental degradation but the death of habitats in which animals themselves can survive. Label by Callie Sties