Scorched Tales: Fantasy Portrait Series
On a chilly November morning in 2016, three Polytechnic School classmates gathered in the Nõmme forest with a camera, a reflector, a book and a lighter. I was there to photograph Kätleen, with Reio assisting me.
All three of us were studying Printing Technology at the time.
Which makes the choice of prop slightly ironic.
We were spending our days learning about paper, printing materials, binding technologies and how printed products, including books, were actually made. Then we went into a forest and set one on fire.
Playing with Fire
The idea was a dark fantasy portrait built around a burning book. I wanted the fire, smoke and flying pieces of burnt paper to be part of the actual scene rather than something added afterwards.
The book we burned for this photo shoot.
We chose the book mainly because its light blue cover with golden stripes looked good in the photos. It happened to be a Russian-language edition of a book about the life of Lenin. So, probably not the greatest loss to literary history.
No models were harmed.
The first attempts looked much more dramatic than they felt. The wind blew the flames towards Kätleen, but they were actually passing between her and the camera. She was perfectly safe, although the photos suggest otherwise.
We got the book properly ablaze, and just as the biggest flames died down and the pages started smouldering, it began to snow. Perfect timing. The little white flakes mixed with the smoke and burnt pieces of paper floating through the air.
It was only a couple of degrees above zero. Reio and I had jackets. Kätleen had a short-sleeved dress and apparently no problem with this arrangement. Brave model.
