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‘Facing the Inferno’ brings wildland fire photos to Old Capitol Museum in Iowa City
Photojournalist Kari Greer of Idaho will deliver a keynote speech March 26 and speak with students during her University of Iowa visit
Photo documentarian Kari Greer sees not only the danger, but also the beauty in the natural order of wildland fires. And since the 1990s, she’s been capturing the landscape and the workers involved in getting wildfires under control.
The harrowing beauty of those images is on display through May 10, 2024, in the Old Capitol Museum’s ground-floor gallery in downtown Iowa City.
“Facing the Inferno: The Wildfire Photography of Kari Greer” captures not only the sheer magnitude of the blazes in the West, but also the people who are fighting to contain or redirect those fires, which can burn for months.
And just because Iowans don’t face those threats on the same scale — if at all — the haze from fires in the West and Canada drift into Iowa, affecting air quality and visibility. This past summer, the drift from Canadian wildfires blanketed Cedar Rapids, obscuring the downtown skyline and causing some outdoor activities and concerts to be either moved indoors or canceled, for safety’s sake.
“I pretty much have lived my career in that haze,” Greer said by phone from Mesa, Ariz., where she was visiting family. Her home is in Garden Valley, Idaho, about an hour north of Boise, where she serves as a contract photographer with the National Interagency Fire Center based in Boise.
Her work has been published in magazines, National Geographic Adventure, Wildland Firefighter and The New York Times. One of her photos from the 2015 Wolverine Fire near Holden, Wash., was published in The Gazette.
If you go
What: “Facing the Inferno: The Wildfire Photography of Kari Greer”
Where: Hanson Humanities Gallery, ground floor, Old Capitol Museum, 21 N. Clinton St., Iowa City
When: To May 10, 2024
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday; closed Sunday to Tuesday
Admission: Free
Exhibition Spotlight: Living with Smoke: Free virtual program, noon to 1 p.m. March 20. Meet researchers from the University of Iowa and other organizations who are shaping the conversation around fire and smoke management with science and firsthand accounts. Register to receive the free webinar link at lp.constantcontactpages.com/ev/reg/xrujyzf
Facing the Inferno: Visiting Artist Kari Greer: 5:30 to 7 p.m. March 26, Senate Chamber, Old Capitol Museum, 21 N. Clinton St., Iowa City. Free in-person program. At 6 p.m., Greer will discuss her art, her career, firsthand knowledge of fire from the 1990s to today, and how photographic documentation impacts our collective understanding. Panel discussion and Q&A follows, with UI faculty working on Living With Smoke, examining the impacts of smoke on respiratory infections in the Western and Midwestern United States. Details: pentacrestmuseums.uiowa.edu/event/136501/0
Exhibition information: pentacrestmuseums.uiowa.edu/facing-inferno
Artist’s website: kariphotos.com/
Her career path began during her college years. While studying photography at California State University in Sacramento, she also served on a Forest Service fire crew in the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest in Washington state.
“It was pretty addictive. And that's probably why I found my niche in photographing fire. Because as a firefighter, I just fell in love with it,” she said. “ … I absolutely had to do it. When I started out as a firefighter, I tried to figure out how I could become a photographer, because that’s really what I started out to become.
“When I encountered fire, it was absolutely a no-brainer,” she said. “I just had to make that my career.”
Art connections
As a photojournalist, her work is intended to illustrate points or concepts, and not for entertainment. So she was surprised when she was approached about creating a national touring exhibition of her fire photography.
Roger Rowley, executive director at the Moscow (Idaho) Contemporary knew of her work, contacted her, then created the exhibit which has been touring the country for about five years.
“I was floored when he wanted a public (showing) of my work,” Greer said. “I hadn't thought of it in that way. I thought it was utilitarian, but he liked my compositions and the people pictures.”
She is drawn not only to the sweeping landscapes, but also to showing the expressions, emotions and soot the fire crews experience — a realm she knows so well.
“I’m definitely drawn to that,” she said.
Viewing her own work as art makes sense, however.
“When I’m photographing, I’m always trying to compose a pleasing image in my viewfinder. It has to set well with my brain,” she said, adding that while she studied photography in college, she also took classes in the art department. “Maybe that was instilled in me — the composition.”
Inherent dangers
Safety is of primary importance in the field, and her years as a firefighter gave her experience on the line, which helped her gain trust in her twofold role as a fire photographer.
“In the ’90s when I began, there was a big push to really photograph and create videos of fires from the line. You’re right on the heels of the firefighters showing what they do,” she said. “The intent was to beef up training materials, and to provide public awareness. Budgets were a lot more flush back then, so there was money to spend on photographers and videographers.”
Still, the danger is palpable every step of the way. Even when she’s working on her own, she never wanders off, and always is in view of other people. She also gets briefings so she’ll know where to be.
“Fire is inherently dangerous,” she said. “It's a lot of moving parts in the chaos of nature. There are rolling rocks and falling trees and smoke in the air and driving hazards, and hazards when you’re hiking around on a mountainside.”
Staying safe is “a career-long endeavor, because fire is so complicated,” she said. “But I know the protocol. I know how to navigate on the fire line and … I know how things are going to go. That knowledge makes it so that I can figure out where I need to be, what’s going to be pertinent.”
Incident management teams also are part of the crew.
“Safety is really hammered home to all fire personnel, so firefighters and drivers and support people who deliver equipment out to the fire line — everyone gets the safety briefing. And they have safety officers out there,” she said.
“It's one of those things where you have to maintain accountability. There’s a direct hierarchy on the fire line.”
She has her own handheld radio, and has to manage her own situation, but she has no limitations on how close she can get to the action.
“I’m supposed to get close,” she said. “That’s my job.”
She also has to take care of her health, with spending so much time in smoky environments over her career.
“I have a really strong desire to show people something extraordinary,” she said, “and I want to show the truth about it. I want to show what does it really look like and feel like and smell like? My camera straps smell like smoke all the time.”
She’ll wear an N95 mask if she’s in an area where houses are burning, to protect her lungs from the toxins and chemicals in everything from vinyl siding to carpet. But out in the field, away from urban dangers, it’s too hard to wear a mask with all the hiking that’s involved.
Detoxification measures are part of her routine — everything from taking supplements to sitting in saunas and using cold water therapy, which have been shown to alleviate aches and swelling, aid relaxation and support immunity.
“I'm very careful with my health and my diet and exercise, so that I can clear out particulate matter,” she said. “It’s a problem, and it’s really something to take seriously. The cumulative effects, I do believe, are a definite risk to firefighters. And so I try to share my fears with my colleagues and urge them to take care of themselves, too.”
Educational connections
Bringing her “Inferno” exhibition to the public also sparks multiple educational opportunities for students of all ages, as well as museum visitors.
Whenever Pentacrest Museums staff members are considering traveling exhibits to bring to Iowa City, they look for how the works “will meet the greater need of our campus and community,” said Jessica Smith, communications coordinator for the Pentacrest Museums, which includes the Old Capitol Museum and the Museum of Natural History.
“We’re thinking about interdisciplinary curricular connections that can support the teaching goals and objectives of the most instructors on campus and beyond.”
“Facing the Inferno” meets that criteria on many levels.
“It’s very popular — for good reason — because wildfires are very prevalent in our news and a lot of what many of us are facing today,” Smith said, pointing to air quality issues from last summer’s hazy skies.
“So while we might not be experiencing wildfires here the way we’re seeing in a lot of other places in the United States, we are impacted by them here. And so it’s a really important conversation.
“It’s timely and important, and there’s a lot of incredible curricular relevancy across many subjects — from fine art, and journalism and photography to public health, engineering, ecology and beyond,” she said.
“And that’s the sweet spot for us — when we can have something that’s really illustrating a lot of different curricular connections and making a space where instructors and students can teach, learn and get out of their textbooks and out of their classrooms into a gallery for learning.”
She said the exhibit and its learning opportunities also tie directly into a UI cross-discipline initiative titled “Living with Smoke,” examining the impacts of smoke and respiratory infections in the Midwest.
Photographer Greer also will meet with UI students during her residency at the end of March, which Smith said will be especially valuable for photojournalism students. They’ll be able to see how their imagery can live on as fine art, separated from the context of helping tell a story of a single event in the news.
For schoolteachers wanting to bring their students to the exhibit, Smith and her colleague, Carolina Kaufman, director of education and engagement, have developed an extensive network of links to various curriculum interests, from history and geography to engineering and technology, public safety, visual art, business and more.
Their goal is to open the doors for learning in this gallery and others across the two Pentacrest museums.
Smith wants visitors to discover “that when they come to (those spaces), they’re going to be surprised, and they’re going to see something they haven’t seen before. It’s always going to be changing, and it’s going to be thought-provoking. It’s going to be eye-catching. It’s going to be inspirational.
“Those are things that you can count on not only with this exhibit, but just knowing when (you) walk in that museum, there’s going to be something new down there. And it’s going to be thought-provoking. It’s going to be topical. And more times than not, it’s going to be beautiful.”
Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com
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