Ada Zielińska Chases Catastrophe with Her Camera

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Flaming cars and wildfires reveal the sorts of catastrophes that can feel distant but are obviously already here. The daughter of a firefighter, photographer Ada Zielińska explains how she got into watching the world burn.

ADA ZIELIŃSKA: When I got into photography, my first big idea was to stage car crashes. I choreographed scenes depicting the aftermath of accidents and the people around them, which I thought were very cinematic. Eventually, I thought about setting a car on fire. I had no idea how to do it, but I remembered my dad was a firefighter when he was very young. He used to tell me stories about putting out fires in Warsaw. I explained my idea and asked him to help me, and he said, “Let’s do it.”

Dad had a friend who owned a junkyard, so we went there. My dad knew exactly what to do, replacing the gasoline in the tank with water. I, on the other hand, was so afraid of the fire that I didn’t take any good pictures. I remember running around in a panic with my camera in my hand. Still, I wanted to go back to it. So I started calling my meeting up with my dad every few weekends, and we would set things on fire. Mostly cars. 

After about five years of doing this, I turned it into the book Pyromaniac Manual. By then, I was scheduling fires with a team of firefighters and directing them. They used my work for training exercises.

There’s one photo of a steering wheel on fire that I took from inside the car. The firefighters put a belt on me so that if something happened, they could pull me out. But when it got to that point, it wasn’t exciting anymore. It wasn’t dangerous. I knew what was going to happen: the tires and airbags were going to explode, the windows were going to crack. 

So I looked further afield. I began traveling to the sites of wildfires, mostly after they had been extinguished. 

In one sense, I’m trying to find beauty in these catastrophes, however crude that sounds. And, later, to think about what they mean. 

In the modern world, we have control over everything. But when a natural disaster comes, even in the most developed countries, there is nothing we can do. Right now, there’s flooding in Dubai. I wish I was there. People have cars that cost $2 million, and they can’t do anything about it. Their cars are just floating away.

I have this memory from a burnt forest I photographed in Australia. It was all black and still. It wasn’t burning, but it was still super hot in there. And what struck me the most was that the birds weren’t singing. It was complete silence. It was so overwhelming. On the one hand, it was, I don’t know, the worst thing in the world. But on the other hand, it was so beautiful and scary.

Follow Ada Zielińska on Instagram.

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