Beauty from Ashes: Great Smoky Mountain Wildfires 2016

This entry is long overdue, but began a project a friend and I are working on called Beauty from Ashes that speaks to the restoration of women in the midst of hardship and trauma, something I am personally so passionate about. I am working on a series of images on Women and Dignity that I hope to display and use to show the incredible perseverance of women in the South and all over the world.

My friend and partner-in-crime Laura, an amazing dressmaker and creative genius, allowed me to turn the camera on her, which never happens, and photograph her in a dress she made for herself. The Great Smoky Mountain wildfires had just hit, and claimed the lives of fourteen people, destroying 18,000 acres of the park, and doing $500 million worth of estimated damage.

We drove to Gatlinburg with yards and yards of pink tulle in the back of her car, and changed quickly and took in the incredible damage of a tiny town in the mountains that is home and respite to so many. We drove all over the city and found a few places to shoot - finding stillness in the chaos of such destruction and some images we can use.

We found, like in so many other settings of natural disasters, hope and the resources of a community that had pulled together, as well as the stark blackness of destruction, and people who were simply overwhelmed by it all.

My desire is to show the juxtaposition of beauty amidst the hard places, rather than in spite of it. Overcoming beauty, I believe, is the most attractive and enduring.

 

 

 

Isaiah 61:1,3

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.