The Fireweed Turns (Signed)

Publisher's Description

“A mythical place, somewhere that could excite and seduce, yet profoundly frighten...”“The landscape of the Pacific Northwest was rooted in my memory and imagination at a young age. When I was nine years old, my family moved from the Sultanate of Oman to America. My father worked on a remote island in the Aleutian Chain and would come home with stories of the men and the landscape, both strange and incredible. At the same time, talk in the playground was of the local manhunt for the Green River killer. When I was later sent to school in Northern Ireland, the narrative of this extraordinary backdrop became fixed; it was a mythical place, somewhere that could excite and seduce, yet profoundly frighten...” The Fireweed Turns takes place one summer in Alaska. Katharine MacDaid rented a jeep, bought a sleeping bag and a road map and set off with some half-remembered place names in a notebook. Alone in the landscape, MacDaid was both in awe and fearful of the desire that drove her. Made to resemble a storybook, The Fireweed Turns considers the psychological power of Landscape. It is a story of shame and desire, about what is hidden and what is revealed.

Katharine MacDaid (b 1979, Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a photographer living and working between London and Donegal. MacDaid grew up in the Sultanate of Oman, America, Northern Ireland and London. After graduating with an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, she moved back to Oman for several years to make the work, ‘Of Calling Shapes and Beckoning Shadows’. Since returning to the UK she has begun a long-term project considering questions of landscape, belonging and Irish identity.