FIRES of INNOCENCE
On Fire, 2022 (6.49 min) by Oscar Cannon and Alan McFetridge.
On Fire is a short film exploring the natural elements of an urban environment. It positions the city as a biome, with interwoven ecosystems of life running through it. With a combination of landscape photography and digital editing, the film presents a familiar setting through an uncanny lens, resulting in a dreamlike journey through a world that any city-dweller will recognise.
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Authors’ Process Notes
Walking, Loving, Burning, Drawing - On Fire is a draft, a sketch, of fire in the metropolis, but it is by fires burning hearts.
In February 2022, I travelled to Istanbul to meet artist Nilay Paz. Each day, we spent hours walking around the different areas of the inner city, preparing home-cooked meals and eating together in the evening. Before midnight, we walked to the nearest public transport and said farewell until the next day.
This generosity shown, made me feel at ease in Europe's most populated city, a hectic network supporting the lives of 20 million, and I began making moving and static sketches using a phones camera and recording ambient sounds to encompass waves of movement beyond the camera’s view. When I came across a painting titled Fire by chance by Migirdic Civanyan (1848 -1906). I attempted to imagine the place at that time, perhaps 125 years earlier, by moving to the areas where the fire could have been noticed to make the painting and where the sparks originated - while moving through the 21st Century City/Biome of Istanbul.
I met another artist, Oscar, sometime later that year and, intrigued by his relationships with dreams and digital technology, handed over the materials so he could compose something in accordance with his views.
A.M.
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Making this video was new for me as I’d never collaborated on a work this way. When Alan first showed me his footage, I was intrigued as I saw fragments of an experience through someone else’s eyes. I recognised many things, but I found other things unusual simply because I lacked the broader context and firsthand experience. At first, I struggled to find meaning in the footage, but I found the storytelling as I continued working with it.
O.C.
Fire by Migirdic Civanyan 1848 -1906. Found on display at the exhibition ‘Bursai - This Place’ at Yapı Kredi Museum, Istanbul, 2022. Curated by Kevser Güler Cinkaya
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On The Line, 2019.
I visited the aftermath of the 2016 PyroCB fire in Alberta's Fort McMurray, which led to the evacuation of 80,000 people. Follow the links below to view ground-level photographs of the PyroCB fire event.
Crude, Cataclysmic and … Manufactured? How the Horse River Fire continues to inform our upcoming monograph
Firegrams will be featured in an upcoming Monograph, supported by landscape photography and writing by Antoinette Johnson. You can read more about the monograph in a blog post here.
Firegram Prints | Available in Store
Limited edition Firegram prints are available to purchase from our online store
For further information on this project please contact the Studio
All images © Alan McFetridge