Through the Shadow
Photographs by Fritz Liedtke
In the late summer of 2003, a forest fire erupted in the dry forests of the Cascade Mountains near Sisters, Oregon. Over the course of the next 5 weeks, the B and B Complex fire would scorch over 90,000 acres of forestlands before it was contained.
- Shortly after this catastrophe, I was awarded an artist residency by Caldera. Their Central Oregon campus, on Blue Lake, was within the area damaged by fire. While Caldera’s buildings were miraculously spared, fire ravaged the surrounding forest.
- The raw power of fire left its indelible mark on the landscape, and upon me: it was apocalyptic, bizarre, powerful, spooky, surreal. My time wandering this charred landscape for two weeks left me stilled and in awe.
- Metaphor abounds here: beauty from ashes; life and death; the ravages of war; creation and the fall; body and environment; phoenix rising. Without attempting to create literal interpretations of such themes, I did want to explore the juxtaposition of bringing living people into this environment of death and decay. To make surreal work in a surreal place. And so we did.
- While in Sisters one afternoon, I showed some Polaroids of my work to an older woman with whom I was speaking. Repeatedly she pulled out a portrait I’d taken of a young girl struggling with manic depression. Looking at it, she said it reminded her of part of Psalm 23. As she quoted it, I had to agree:
- “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”
Images in this series were captured on medium and large format film; finished prints are printed with archival carbon-based inks on archival cotton rag paper. Limited editions are available for particular images. Signed prints are available for purchase at the following prices: 11x14/$325, 18x22/$500
Text, Images, and Design are Copyright 2004, Fritz Liedtke