Sarah Pickering's 'Fire Scene' Series

Sarah Pickering’s photographs disturb our sense of security and illuminate the ways in which we cope with traumatic events that are beyond our control. Her pictures depict environments and events crafted specifically for simulated training to prepare police officers, firefighters, and soldiers for calamities ranging from fire and civil unrest to terrorism and war. By exposing the absurdity and controlled nature of these environments, Pickering’s images reveal our predilection to deflect fear by trying to anticipate and plan for it—and our tendency to create a story to help us process it.

Ultimately Pickering’s photographs raise questions about the efficacy of preparedness and hint at the psychological effort needed to combat and recover from trauma—the struggle to live with the anxiety that can accompany security. Pickering’s Fire Scene pictures (2007) document containers outfitted as home environments and are staged as elaborate, crammed domestic spaces, deliberately heavy with a narrative: each fire has been designed according to a specific cause, such as an electric heater malfunctioning, or a cigarette that has been dropped. By showing many different forms of fire causes, it portrays how vulnerable we really are.

I like how Pickering addresses the ongoing issue of fire safety. It is a common occurrence that many people are still not aware of or choose to ignore. I feel that Pickerings images give us an insight into the consequences of many different causes of fires and gives us a bit of a reality check.  I feel these images imply a hint of captivating beauty in the blaze and a thrilling quality of danger and I find that even though these photos are digitally manipulated, the subject matter is very realistic, making these images believable.