Landscape fire, tended landscapes, and renewal
5 nominations for the Prix Pictet Fire Cycle, featured in The Guardian, research presented at the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum,
Leverhulme Centre for Wildfire, Environment and Society & UK Association for Art History
A lifetime of photography, ten years photographing how communities live alongside fire.
Above: Night of the Buffalo Spirit, Arnhem Land, 2020
Charcoal mural, 220 × 180 cm
Featured Projects
Fire North: Book One, Fort McMurray Wildfire
In 2016, wildfire forced 90,000 people out of Fort McMurray, Canada, in a single afternoon. This book is about what happened after, told through the people who stayed to rebuild.
My sorrow at dawn, 2017.
Waterways, Fort McMurray.
1920mm x 1610 mm x 70mm.
Chroma Print - Museum-Grade Cotton Rag with Baryta & Wax Coating..
Fire North: Book One was made in relation to Fort McMurray | ᓂᐢᑕᐋᐧᔮᐤ | Nistawâyâw | Ełídlį Kuę́, within Treaty 8 Territory: the traditional lands of the Cree and Dene, and the unceded territory of the Métis people. I acknowledge my responsibility as a visitor, artist and witness, and approach this work in the spirit of respect, reciprocity and reconciliation.
Fire in Australia: Black Summer Bushfires
Photographs made during and after the Black Summer bushfires, set alongside ancient Aboriginal burning practices. Professor David Bowman describes these two kinds of fire, catastrophic and cultural, as opposite ends of the same anthropogenic fire story.
View over Wadbilliga National Park, New South Wales, 2020. ©Alan McFetridge
Made during fieldwork after Australia’s Black Summer fires, when fire moved through forests, national parks and the atmosphere on a continental scale.
Made in relation to Yuin Country in south-eastern New South Wales and lutruwita/Tasmania, where fire carries long histories of land care, cultural knowledge and ecological responsibility. I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the continuing custodians of Country, and approach this work in a spirit of respect, reciprocity and learning.
London: Sensing Earth & Being Nature 2026
A public programme of exhibitions, artist-led workshops and ecological encounters across Holland Park and Parliament Hill, developed by Alan McFetridge with Justin Hibbs and Daisy Green Collection.
Photography from Summer Exhibition Holland Park, 2026 © Alan McFetridge
This programme acknowledges London’s parks are living landscapes shaped by deep time, ancient settlement, enclosure, empire, migration, public recreation and ecological change. These grounds carry many histories, including those often forgotten or made invisible.
CANADA
Catastrophic and transcontinental fire
Fire North, an archive 2016 Fort McMurray fire and its aftermath
2023 fire season from space
Cultural, catastrophic and regenerative burns.
Late-season bushfire, Menai
Early winter burn, Tasmania
Mid dry season burn, Arnhem Land
Black Summer super outbreak, South Eastern Australia
GREECE
Attica and Boeotia fire 2021, 2023, 2025
Periodic cumulative mid-summer burns north of Athens
AUSTRALIA
U.K.
Wennington, Essex, UK
2022
In record 40C heat on 19 July 2022, 18 homes were lost in the village of Wennington
Archive
A lifetime of photography and ten years, thirty projects with one throughline: what fire reveals about how we live with a changing world.
Ten Year Arc (2026)
Sensing Earth | Artist Residency (2026)
Residency Log 2025
Holland Park Artist Residency
Fire Clouds, Canada (2023)
Harvest (2022)
Fort McMurray Burn Scar (2022)
Fires of Innocence (2022)
Dormant Legacy of Fire in the British Landscape, 2022
Antiquity in the Pyrocene (2021-2023)
Pyrocumulonimbus Super Outbreak: Aftermath of the Black Summer Fires, Australia (2019–2020)
Carbon
Night of The Bull Spirit (2020)
Dust & Shadows, 2020
I Am Transforming. (2020)
Healing Flame: Fire as an Ally Lutruwita/Tasmania. (2019)
Dead Reckoning
Skeleton Island
Synchronicity (2018 - 19)
The River Derwent and Hobart Town, Lutruwita (c1831- 2019)
Separated by Meters, Australia (2018)
On The Line (2017) - Short Film
On The Line (2016 -2017)
Fire North: Book One
Fault Line
Pyrograms
Cryograms
Lumsden Hotel, Southland, New Zealand
Motutapu
The Great Western Domestic
Future Strata
Balfron Tower, London, UK
Street Kids
Sunday Best (2015)
Selected Awards, Funding, Features, and Publications:
2024: Judge for the Environmental Category, Association of Photographers, U.K.
Solo Exhibition at Lauderdale House, London, U.K.
2023: Launch of the Centre of Ecological Philosophy and East London SuperLab, U.K.
2022: Songs of the Dead, published in Sophia Journal, University of Porto, Portugal
Finalist for the Marianne Brandt Award, Germany
Nominated for the Falling Walls Breakthrough of the Year - Art and Science, Germany
5 Nominations for Prix Pictet: The global award for photography and sustainability
2019: Featured in The Guardian – After Fire
Book launch for On The Line, Australia
2016: Royal Photographic Society Environmental Bursary, worldwide