🇬🇧 After the fire

The fire in the ‘Hautes Fagnes’ in Belgium dominated the media this summer as a major event. But there have also been fires in many places in Germany. This was also the case not far from where I live, in the heathland around the ‘Büschberg’ near the small village of Arft. The column of smoke could be seen from afar and, together with the plumes of smoke from the fires in the ‘Hautes Fagnes’, a pungent smell of burning hung in the air for days on end.

Now I am standing here on the hill called ‘Büschberg’, three weeks after the fire. The black, charred bark of the pine trees gives off an intense smell of pipe tobacco. The heat of the fire has turned the needles yellow without burning them. In the monoculture further down the slope, the spruce trees have begun to shed their needles. An ochre-coloured carpet of what was once lush greenery covers the entire forest floor. The whole scene seems surreal – almost like an overexposed colour negative from days gone by.

But what on earth am I doing here? There’s nothing left of the former juniper heath, apart from burnt trees and scrub. There are no more picture-postcard views to be found here. And yet here I am – with my camera in my hand. So what made me come here?

I think it’s the (still) extraordinary nature of it all that drew me here. I’d never seen a burnt-out forest before and had no idea what to expect here. There was just one thing I knew beforehand: I didn’t want to simply document it, but to try and capture the morbid beauty of the disaster in pictures. As dramatic as it may sound and look – every ending holds a new beginning. Nature will recover, and I’ll be there with my camera to capture it!