Fire sculptures

Conversation between photographer Murray Fredericks and journalist Chris Broughton / The Guardian
Translation: Telegrafi.com

During my student years, I took very traditional black and white landscape photographs. I spent time in the Himalayas, Patagonia and Tasmania and came back with images of grandeur – something often described as “sublime”. But when I studied art history, I realised that all this had been done before. I was immersed in an aesthetic that had been in fashion 150 years earlier.

I put my work aside, but I kept about ten images that I loved, spread them out in front of me, and asked myself, “What do they have in common?” And what I discovered was that they all had a sense of space and a tendency toward the abstract. Then I thought about whether there was a place where I could work with space and use it as a subject.

For weeks this led me to a campsite at Lake Eyre, a vast and mostly dry salt flat in Australia. My approach to photographing that landscape evolved over the years, as I became increasingly sensitive to the place and my perception of it changed. Eventually, I experimented with incorporating mirrors into my compositions. The series from which this image comes, flame [Blaze], is the latest and continues this process of bringing an additional element to the environment. This time I brought fire.

Door Line flame was created in the Menindi Lakes system along the Darling-Baka River in New South Wales. In the 60s, a series of dams were built there and the forests were flooded, leaving a trail of dead trees within a few years. Driving over one of the dams, I imagined one of those skeletal trees engulfed in flames. The image stuck with me until a few years ago, when the La Ninja weather cycle reached Australia, increasing rainfall and causing the continent's temporary rivers to revive.

I returned to Menindi and spoke to the local community about my idea, explaining that I envisioned the burnt tree as a beacon that would draw people's attention to the way the river had been treated. It's strange when you can crack through an idea and it all starts to take shape.

Fire is an essential part of the Australian landscape. I started this project just a few years after Sydney was blanketed in smoke for months due to bushfires sweeping the east coast, but fire is also used in agriculture and is an important element of the landscape for indigenous peoples.

I spoke to a pyrotechnics effects specialist for films, who created a simple system that allowed me to attach several gas canisters, commonly used for barbecues, to flexible tubes that could be placed at the back of each tree, away from the wood and out of the camera’s field of view. These produced a pattern of flames when we lit them, transforming the tree into a kind of fire sculpture for a few seconds. They only stayed lit for 15 or 20 seconds, while I took the picture, and we also carried bags of water to extinguish any accidental sparks. Although these trees are dead, they still remain important habitats. But the gas flames did not harm them, and the insects or spiders that lived in them remained untouched.

At the end of the project, I took everything apart to see what the fire was doing on its own. I wanted to photograph it as it came directly out of the water and reflected off it. To do this, my assistant, Nick, and I walked a few kilometers to where the water was, dragging all our equipment, and then maybe a kilometer further – the terrain is so flat, you have to go that far before the water is even a meter deep.

The tube was about 10 centimeters under water, and we had to wait until the air was completely still – a rare occurrence – so that the gas could collect on the surface of the water and create mini-explosions. As soon as we did the first test, we saw the flame take on organic shapes. I like the fact that people see these shapes and give their own personal interpretation. For me, this photo, Flame 24 [Blaze 24], looks like a dragon.

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Murray Fredericks' CV

Place of birth and year: Sydney, 1970.

Education: Mostly self-taught combined with short courses on exposure techniques, film processing and printing. After my exhibitions started to get noticed, I went to the University of New South Wales and completed two Masters in Art – one practical and one research.

Impacts: Door Line ROMA [gypsies] by Josef Koudelka was the one that first inspired me. From the networks of Bernd and Hilla Becher I learned the power of the series, while from American photographers Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld and Richard Misrach I learned about the technical aesthetics of using film negatives with large format cameras.

The climax: Perhaps the film's early success Salt [Salt], which was originally a video documentation of my master's thesis, but which later won 12 major cinematographic awards (and was nominated for an Oscar).

The most difficult moment: To be alone on the ice sheet in Greenland and be notified by satellite phone that a polar bear was coming towards me. I spent a long night in a snowstorm waiting with flares and a rifle for an attack I didn't see coming.

Top tips: Follow your instincts, do your own thing, work harder than you can dream. /Telegraph/