Transient Flame / Enduring Ash

North Evia, Greece · 2021 - 2023 · developed through repeated visits following the 2021 wildfires

Transient Flame / Enduring Ash traces repeated encounters with the fire-affected landscapes of North Evia following the 2021 wildfires.

Made across visits between September 2021 and early 2023, the photographs move through charred woodland, exposed ground, emerging vegetation and landscapes in which evidence of the fire remains embedded within continuing ecological change.

Rather than describing recovery as a return to an earlier state, the work attends to what persists, what disappears, and what begins to develop within an altered terrain.

Bright green crop growth fills the foreground beside a stand of blackened and scorched trees under a dark blue-grey sky in North Evia, one month after the 2021 wildfires.

Between Limni and Drimona, North Evia, Greece, August–September 2021. A cultivated field remained green beside fire-burned woodland approximately one month after the 2021 wildfires.

The fire itself was no longer present, but its structure remained everywhere.

Ash covered the ground. Bark had become charcoal. Trunks stood stripped of canopy and familiar woodland forms had been reduced to line, surface and residue.

During the earliest visits, the landscape was difficult to read through anything other than what had happened to it. The event had passed, but its material consequences had not.

A steep fire-burned valley in North Evia, seen from a mountain road, with blackened tree trunks covering the slopes and exposed earth in the foreground.

Between Limni and Drimona, North Evia, Greece, August–September 2021. View across a fire-burned valley from the mountain road, approximately one month after the 2021 wildfires.

A dirt track curves through a fire-damaged pine forest in North Evia, with blackened trunks on both sides and orange-brown needles covering the forest floor.

Close view of a fire-scorched forest floor patterned with black ash, pale exposed soil and scattered brown pine needles in North Evia, Greece.

A charred branch lies diagonally across blackened, ash-covered ground scattered with pine needles beside a road in North Evia, photographed about a month after the 2021 wildfires.

The blackened remains of an ancient olive tree lie among scorched branches and burned ground in an olive grove near Rovies, North Evia, following the 2021 wildfires.

Near Rovies, North Evia, Greece, August–September 2021. The remains of an ancient olive tree locally known as “the Bride,” said to be approximately 2,500 years old, after it burned during the 2021 wildfires.

Then other forms began to become visible.

Grass emerged through ash. Moss occupied burned surfaces. Small plants appeared between damaged roots and beneath standing blackened trees.

These were not signs that the fire had been undone. They were evidence that disturbance had not brought the landscape to a halt.

A small cluster of bright green grass grows from blackened soil beneath charred branches in fire-damaged woodland in North Evia.

Blackened tree trunks rise from a sloping, rock-covered forest floor with small patches of green growth in burned woodland near Drimona, North Evia.

Bright green ferns spread across a dark fire-scorched hillside beneath a stand of blackened tree trunks near Drimona, North Evia.

Bright green new growth covers the forest floor beneath dense, blackened and leafless trees on a burned hillside near Drimona, North Evia.

Near Drimona, North Evia, Greece, November 2021. Fresh ground vegetation spreads across the burned forest floor several months after the 2021 wildfires, while the fire-damaged trees remain standing.

Over time, the distinction between damaged and living became less clear.

Burned trunks remained while vegetation thickened beneath them. Dead, surviving and newly emerging forms occupied the same ground. The forest did not simply replace one condition with another; multiple states became visible at once.

What interested me increasingly was not recovery as erasure, but the way a changed landscape continued to carry its disturbance while becoming something else.

Wide view across a mountainous North Evia valley, with dead and fire-damaged trees mixed among surviving green pines and returning vegetation beneath low cloud.

North Evia, Greece, December 2022. Across the valley, fire-damaged forest remains interspersed with surviving trees and renewed vegetation more than a year after the 2021 wildfires.

Charred remains of an ancient olive tree rise from dense green vegetation beneath a blue and pink evening sky in North Evia, more than a year after the 2021 wildfire.

Rovies, North Evia, Greece, December 2022. The remains of the ancient olive tree locally known as The Bride, photographed more than a year after it burned in the 2021 wildfires, stand amid returning vegetation.

Golden autumn ferns cover the forest floor beneath dense blackened tree trunks near Drimona, North Evia, in December 2022.

A charred fallen tree trunk lies across dense green regrowth in a burned woodland between Limni and Drimona, North Evia, December 2022.

Sunlight falls through a burned forest near Drimona, North Evia, illuminating dense green regrowth beneath dark fire-scarred trunks.

Burned woodland between Limni and Drimona, North Evia, with blackened trunks, pale limestone rocks and patches of green vegetation returning across the forest floor.

By the later visits, the landscape had changed again.

Vegetation had returned unevenly. Some areas had become dense with new growth; elsewhere the burned structure remained exposed. Human intervention introduced further cuts, clearings and altered surfaces into an already transformed terrain.

Nothing in these photographs suggests a return to a previous condition. What remains is a landscape continuing through disturbance - carrying the evidence of what happened while entering forms that could not have been predicted at the moment of the fire.

The fire passed. Its effects did not.

Transient Flame / Enduring Ash considers what becomes visible when a landscape is allowed to be understood not only through what it lost, but through what remains, changes and develops in its aftermath.

A narrow track passes through regenerating woodland between Limni and Drimona, with green undergrowth growing among burned trees, fallen branches and pale rocky ground.

Between Limni and Drimona, North Evia, Greece, December 2022. New vegetation spreads across a fire-damaged slope, while burned trunks, fallen branches and exposed ground remain embedded in the recovering woodland.

Large green plants and dense ground vegetation grow across the forest floor among blackened, fire-damaged trees near Drimona, North Evia.

A fallen blackened tree crosses a rocky forest floor where green vegetation is returning among fire-damaged trunks near Drimona, North Evia.

Sunlight passes through a fire-damaged woodland where green ground vegetation has returned beneath blackened tree trunks near Drimona, North Evia.

Dark silhouettes of fire-scarred trees stand against a low orange sunrise near Drimona, North Evia.

Near Drimona, North Evia, Greece, December 2022. The sun rises behind fire-damaged woodland during a later return to the burned landscape.

Selected images, image sequences, and wider unpublished archive material are available for editorial, publishing, institutional, and selected commercial licensing. Please get in touch with details of the intended use, territory, duration, and image requirements for availability and a tailored quote.

The archive includes further studies of fire-scarred woodland, charred olive groves, forest interiors, emerging vegetation, post-fire regeneration, and the changing landscape of North Evia across repeated visits.

Open to selected editorial, publishing, licensing, speaking, and collaborative enquiries.

REQUEST THE EXTENDED EDIT

Licensing, Editorial & Collaboration Enquiries

Tell me a little about the publication, project, intended use, or collaboration you have in mind.