How a sudden wildfire in Palermo led photographer Jim Fenwick to create award-winning images

With the recent destruction caused by the wildfires in Los Angeles, Fenwick’s 'Wildfires in Palermo' photo series feels more relevant than ever.

Transcript

00:00Anyone who looks at the world slightly from a different angle, I'm interested in.

00:09Anyone who the world looks at them from a wrong angle, I'm interested in that too.

00:24Now I was in Palermo on a completely different project, but when I saw the fires, I just

00:32knew that I needed to shoot them, and it's something that happened very quickly.

00:35I was going off to work, the guy picking me up was late, and he called me saying, oh Jim,

00:39there's wildfires, I'm going to be late, and I'm like, okay, alright, fine.

00:43And when I got out of the hotel and I saw what he was talking about, I was blown away

00:47by it.

00:48Driving off to this location to shoot, the traffic was just chaos, there was fires on

00:54the side of the road, the hill was on fire.

00:57It was quite incredible, and it was late in the afternoon, when we finally got to the

01:02location where I was doing a night shoot, the sun started to set, and as the sky got

01:07darker and darker, it got redder and redder, and what happened is a low cloud base had

01:13come over, and all the red of the flames had gone up, and it was bouncing, that red was

01:18bouncing off the underside of the low cloud base, and I just thought that it was beautiful,

01:24but also horrific all at the same time.

01:29So we ran around, and you know, those photographs that I made are basically red skies, those

01:35trees would have been silhouetted, but we ran around with lights, and we lit them, and

01:39using colours to work off, I'm really interested in colour theory, and we used colours to work

01:44off the sky, so I just uplit those trees quickly, and literally, very instinctive shoot, the

01:50whole thing took about an hour.

01:51I think the very fact that they were photographed without planning, to show that this thing

01:56can just erupt and happen in your life, you know, in certain parts of the world, is something

02:00that shouldn't be ignored, and actually, my imagery can be used as a conversation point,

02:05not even talking about my imagery, you know, to talk about something big, and then I'm

02:08very happy for that to happen.

02:16A few years ago, I was on High Street Ken, and it's quite a wealthy area, lots of Range

02:20Rovers, Porsches, and the traffic jams, and there was this weird energy, and everyone

02:25was beeping, and the traffic had come to a complete standstill.

02:29On mass, were all these teenagers coming through doing wheelies.

02:33Now these are the kids who have no voice, a lot of them, I don't want to generalise,

02:37but a lot of them come from families and backgrounds, and where they have no voice, but when they

02:44come together like this on mass, they cannot be ignored.

02:48Lots of people look outraged at this, because the way they ride, they ride up cars and last

02:52minute swerve away.

02:54They take risks, and they are huge groups of kids, coexisting, having a purpose, where

03:01they travel, a lot of them are from South East London, like Deptford and whatnot, and

03:04they cycle all through London.

03:07It's like this single spirit of youth that actually are quite something, and you know,

03:13I'm probably 35 years older than most of those kids, 30 years older, got my little

03:19Brompton bike, cycled over, got chatting to them, and they invited me on one of their

03:23rides, and so I went for a ride with them, and they were completely and utterly welcoming

03:28to me.