Yesterday's Hearth (Nora Creina, SA)

This work explores the hearth as a motif of human experience that has endured for hundreds of thousands of years into the present. People have been gathering around fires to cook, sleep, drink and share stories for more than a 100,000 years. The controlled use of fire is considered by some scientists to be a significant cultural turning point that is fundamental to humans becoming human. I don’t know about the science of ancient ashes or how other cultures felt about fire but I do know that the hearth continues to be a place where people come together. My photographic series, Yesterday’s Hearth, is an exploration into the power of the campfire to generate spaces of reflection, conversation, imagination and intimacy.