For my Ashes series, I drew inspirations from my natural affinity towards foggy days in the Washington foothills, Director John Hillcoat’s film The Road, and the American writer Jonathan Safran Foer. A passage that has always stuck with me from his book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close touches on the harrowing tales of WWII and going-on after experiencing something catastrophic:
“The first bombing lasted less than half an hour, but it felt like days and weeks, like the world was going to end, the bombing stopped as matter of factly as it had began. “Are you OK? “Are you OK?” We ran out of the cellar which was flooded with yellow-gray smoke, we didn’t recognize anything, I had been on the stoop just half an hour before, and now there was no stoop in front of no house on no street, only fire in every direction, all that remained of our house was a patch of the façade that stubbornly held up the front door… The second raid began, I threw myself into the nearest cellar… birds with their wings on fire sang from the telephone wires over which desperate calls traveled… my lungs were trying to pull the room in through my mouth, there was a silver explosion… The bombs were like a waterfall… Keep thinking. Thinking will keep me alive.”
For years it’s been discussed whether or not the attacks on Dresden Germany were justified. Nevertheless, countless victims paid their lives that subsequently had nothing to do with the war effort. Equally, thousands that lived through the tragedy lived with the memories of the firebombing.
When we experience something catastrophic, what steps do we do to move forward? Do we disintegrate and digress with the debris? How are we able to rebuild ourselves in the effort of becoming stronger? These were all issues I wanted to tackle within myself, and the viewer of my series.
