Tamara Dean

Contributing photographer for Vital project highlighting irrecoverable carbon in Australia

Artist Statement

Part dream, part reality, these photographs depict the way my minds eye soars through the landscape. The weightless figures are immersed in the scene, gliding effortlessly through this altered space.

These photographs represent my love for the environment, the forests and the trees, and also my despair for our environments altered by a changed climate. As fires and floods have dominated Australia over the past few years, my mind imagines images of our forests underwater and the strange new landscapes born of burnt ground.

The place I call home is in the foothills of Cambewarra Mountain in south east Australia. As I sit here writing my artists statement, I look out upon one of the irreplaceable places mapped for its high carbon value. Seeing the mapping of these critically important places to protect has changed my own relationship to the landscape around me. Beyond my own appreciation for the beauty and wonder of these places, I hadn’t realised their critical significance to the future of our planet. It adds a deeper, more urgent layer to my understanding of place.

The Irrecoverable Carbon project took me on a trip which traversed multiple National Parks and State forests from the Blue Mountains in NSW down and into the old growth forests of East Gippsland and further south to the rugged beauty of Wilsons Promentary. The word “magnificent” doesn’t even sum up the cathedrals of age-old trees and ferns in the forests of East Gippsland, dwarfing me in their majesty. It is a humbling experience to be amongst these giants.

But within the beauty of what I experienced around me was also a sense of despair and devastation. The bushfires which had come close to my home in early 2020 had left their indelible mark on the forests of the entire trip. They have altered the sensitive ecosystems and the landscapes. The silence in some of the forests I visited was haunting. To think that three years on the hum of birds, animals and insects is still virtually absent. To be able to hear only cracking branches and creaking trees swaying in the forests is a very unsettling feeling indeed.

This series of photographs is my devotion to nature, to the forests and trees, to the insects and the animals, to the cycles of life and the incredible power of renewal.

I hope that these photographs spark a sense of curiosity and wonderment in the viewer. That they prompt conversation and consideration of how we can protect and value these irreplaceable environments across the planet.