MATTHEW ABBOTT – BLACK SUMMER
KUNSTHAUS WIESBADEN
From June 2019 to March 2020, Australia was ravaged by the worst bushfires the country has ever experienced. While the fires were still raging, it was given its name: Black Summer — also the title of Matthew Abbott’s series. The »black« summer left behind charred animals with pain-distorted facial expressions, cars that look like carcasses, charred forests and grotesquely out-of-place swimming pools.
Photographer Matthew Abbott has photographed all of this up close in a way that takes your breath away. The heat seems palpable on the skin. Smoke and fumes seem painfully real. His series is borne of deep compassion for the victims of the catastrophe, as 34 people died in the flames, which were up to 100 meters high. An estimated 186,000 square kilometers of land, nearly 6,000 buildings and nearly three billion animals burned, including from species that were already threatened with extinction beforehand. Matthew Abbott: »Gradually, I realized that I was witnessing what fire historian Stephen Pyne calls the pyrocene: an age that threatens to unhinge the planet.«
Matthew Abbott. Born in Sydney in 1984. Australian photojournalist. He studied International Photojournalism at the Danish School of Journalism in Copenhagen and holds a Master of Arts from the University of Sydney. Abbott has won most prestigious awards for photojournalism: three World Press Awards and four Walkleys. He photographs and writes for the New York Times. He placed second in the World Press Photo 2020 spot news category with “Black Summer.” He is represented by Panos Pictures in London and is a member of the Australian collective Oculi.
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