Ian Bates – The Weight of Ash
To celebrate the release of his third monograph, The Weight of Ash, presenting the many complexities of wildfire and its aftermath in the American West, Ian Bates will present a selection of photographic prints from the same series in a new, extended gallery space.
The Weight of Ash is a collection of gripping and poignant works made between 2014 and 2020, when Bates traveled tirelessly along the West Coast of the United States, photographing a charred land suffering from increasing scorching wildfires. But, far from any voyeuristic dramatization, scarce are the depictions of the roaring flames, or of the fire’s fury. Rather, standing at a respectful distance, Bates photographs in rich black and white tones what is at the margin, the traces, the aftermaths. The beauty and horror of the landscape, too, enshrouded in a grey cloak of ashes and plumes. “There is a moment after a wildfire burns but before humans return”, says Bates, “where the land and forests are both beautiful and terrifying.”
His photographs, seemingly suspended out of time in a muffled silence, at the edge of the catastrophe, are a meditative exploration on this liminal stage between calm and violence, on the fine line we dance on when we build and expand on nature’s ground. A meditation on the harshness, anxiety, and beauty of wildfires—which can, as well as destroy, prepare a fertile ground for new life to start.
