A Photographer’s Journey into the Fire Zone By Mark Mann

August 17, 2023 ·

Mark Mann

In 2020 photojournalist Jennifer Osborne travelled to shoot the massive Australia bushfires. Now she’s made wildfire photography her life’s calling.

“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”

Jennifer Osborne sometimes thinks about this line from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest when she reflects on taking photos in fire zones.

“You’re like, ‘This is the most terrifying thing I can imagine,’” the 38-year-old wildfire photographer tells me over the phone from California, where she is shooting the 2023 fire season.

The work of a wildfire photographer is often brutal: plunging into smoke so thick it turns day into night, trying not to breathe in the dangerous particulates, perpetually negotiating an escape route if things turn bad … there’s an adrenaline rush, sure, but mostly what Jen experiences is a raw, physical fear.

“I’m aware that I can definitely experience trauma from this work,” she says. “But I...

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Mark Mann

See all articles by Mark Mann

Mark Mann is an award-winning journalist whose feature stories have appeared in Toronto Life, The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Vice, Reader’s Digest, Broadview and Maisonneuve, among others. His writing about contemporary art, dance, film and photography have appeared regularly in Momus, Blouin ARTINFO, The Dance Current, and elsewhere. He is the Associate Editor-in-Chief of BESIDE, a Montreal-based magazine that seeks to bridge the gap between nature and culture.