Air

Between these periods of daytime darkness, the town was blanketed by an orange sky. Mounsey captures the suffocating thickness of this air, beneath which even the sea appears impenetrable. Through her lens, the scenes of mass naval evacuation become landscapes of impossible density: ash-filled air clogs the sky, steel boats are carried by water that appears hardened and jagged. In one image, a man and his dog stand on a rocky pier in the distance — as the artist recounts, the man’s family had fled to safety the day before. 2 In another, three children paddle out on still water: two using canoes and one with a boogie board. They stare up at the red skies, more curious than fearful. One particularly revealing picture in the series shows Mounsey’s friend two weeks after the fire. She stands on a sand dune at Bastion Point, her arms raised high as she snaps a photo with her phone. Beyond, rust-coloured smoke billows in from Lake Barracoota and Cape Conran, just skirting the water’s edge to reveal a sliver of grey sky on the horizon. As Mounsey recalls, the two were watching a plane collect water from the lake to spread on the fires raging elsewhere in the East Gippsland region. Since the 1870s, the camera has been called on to witness natural and man- made disasters, and photographers have struggled to balance the pursuit of documentary accuracy with an appeal to beauty. Today, anyone with a phone is a photographer susceptible to the aesthetic pull of a landscape in ruin. Two years after the fires, Rachel Mounsey continues to document her community as it rebuilds. For her, this ongoing engagement promises a way out of the loop of ecological damage, spectacle and apathy: I’m shooting what I see. I live here and it’s under my nose. With climate change, we need to see what’s happening, we need to document how we go through this, how we rebuild. 3 SR 2 Conversation with the artist, 14 September 2021. 3 Rachel Mounsey, quoted in ‘Episode 1: The Liquorice Bullet’ [director: Tony Jackson], People’s Republic of Mallacoota , aired 5 April 2022, ABC TV. Rachel Mounsey / Mallacoota fires in the sky 2 (from ‘Mallacoota fires in the sky’ series) 2020 Mallacoota fires in the sky 8 (from ‘Mallacoota fires in the sky’ series) 2020 ‘Mounsey captures the suffocating thickness of this air, beneath which even the sea appears impenetrable.’ 157 156 Invisible Invisible