In the Manner of Smoke

Drawing from his experience as a fire-lookout in the Sequoia forests of the Sierra Nevada in California, Armand Yervant Tufenkian constructs a careful study of the visual documentation of forest fires. Shot on 16mm but bringing together various media technology (from painting to photography to surveillance webcams) and modes of representation, In the Manner of Smoke moves back and forth between California, where Tufenkian’s camera scans the landscape, and London, where artist Dan Hays is observed as he meticulously reproduces, painting pixel by pixel, blown-up webcam footage from the look-out cabin, including images from a particularly devastating fire in 2015 when the landscape choked with smoke for several days. “Reverie and observation forge relations among a landscape painter in London and a veteran fire lookout in California […] the film forms an ecology of images from distinct and ultimately interlinked perspectives.”