This collaborative project with singer-songwriter Alex Nicol sparked from a common interest for the violent wildfires that took place in the summer of 2023 in Canada.
I was helping a friend move on May 25th 2023. On that day the air quality in Montreal was the worst in the entire world. The sunset happened earlier than usual because the air was so thick it made the sun disappear in the most intense red hues I had ever seen in my life. Luckily, I would always carry my camera with me at that time so I was able to take the shot below.
Alex stumbled upon my shot when I posted it on Instagram, and they reached out to me to buy the rights to use it as the cover of his next release. Although, in the end, they ended up going for a different cover, they still wanted to make something around the idea the picture way conveying, so they asked me if I could come up with a visualizer for the Youtube video of his song “Simple Fires”.
The idea was to create something that felt like hand-crafted stop motion, which allowed a lot of flexibility while still being able to give the idea of an evolving environment, impacted by the growing presence of human activity.
stills
