Blue on Fire

Algae blooms in an inlet at the edge of the Salton Sea, the sun’s power reflected. Beauty and disaster collide.

Here, everything burns. A pool of water at the shore of the Salton Sea evaporates in the midday sun, as much a part of the Salton Sea as a metaphor for the shrinking Sea itself. A single feather signifies the Salton Sea's importance for migratory bir

Nominated for the 2021 Prix Pictet

A woman walks by a dying sea, propelled by instincts which existed long before she did. The world burns. Blue on fire is a journey both expansive and intimate, embodied and anonymous, a story of blood, water, light and heat, a story for our times.

What will you mine when the mining is done

will you mine your soul for memories

a river running free

a garden full and fragrant

At the shores of the Salton Sea, as the water recedes, everything burns. Wetlands on the horizon, pools of water evaporating, making their journey up to meet the sun, blooms of algae photosynthesising in the explosion of their own lives, my heart in the presence of such beauty, and in the knowledge that all this too may be lost.

Glistening shore. People talk of death and dying but I’ve not felt that here, precarity and change yes, but this is precisely because it is alive. Fertile, productive, unavoidably so, the beauty and the vulnerability of this place are intimately linked. This is water in the desert, what makes it most problematic is also what makes it so special.

This body of water talks with other bodies, a chemical code, a love song, a conversation. The truth of these interactions is what the Sea is. A material manifestation of story and memory. Bodies after all, cannot lie. This is the real unfolding, asking everything of us.