Youngsuk Suh is a Korean-born fine art photographer and professor at UC Davis, California. Of this series, Let Burn, he writes:
I was once invited to a controlled burn by the US Forest Service, that was being held in the area inside a prison land in Southern California where they train firefighters. Across from the highway is a Six Flags whose giant roller coaster structure was remotely visible from the top of the barren hills through the haze of the 110 degree California sun. I spent a day walking around in a heat that seemed not so much different from the fire I was supposed to be observing, no trees left to give me a shelter and one bottle of water.
My walk was a physical reminder of the landscape I was in. The hard inside surface of the shoe rubbed against the peeled skin over and over. When there is not much you can do about the pain, it seems to make sense. You take it as part of your existence. The scar represents your being, but at the same time you don’t want to make such a big deal out of it. It would be impossible to even consider taking the boots off and walk barefoot. The landscape was oddly familiar but utterly invisible. It is the invisibility offered by the landscape, and by fire that I am interested.
Smoke is the medium through which light is made visible and it renders everything invisible. I am irresistibly attracted to its brilliance and at the same time saddened by its disappearance and by the things that disappear with it. Perhaps it explains why I often feel exhilarated with a sense of being lost in the smoke. I think of the irony of Casper David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. We are betrayed by our desire to climb high and see everything underneath. We end up only looking at the mist, blinded by our own desire.
