The Fumes of Mars
Katerina Angelopoulou
W.G. Sebald wrote: “We, the survivors, see everything from above, see everything at once, and still we do not know how it was.”
The Fumes of Mars is a photography & research project developed in the aftermath of the Mati (Attica, Greece) wildfire on the 23rd of July 2018, one of the deadliest ever recorded. It questions the official narrative by bringing together Photographs of the event and its aftermath, testimonies of numerous survivors, information from the State Investigator Report and the ongoing trial including wildfire specialists and topographical information of the area. A collection of clues, instead, weave together a collective narrative of the story.
Mati was the area I had spent my summers as a child, the home of my parents, and ultimately the only place I could identify as ‘Home’ in my ever-transient existence. The fire rushed from the hilltop, jumping over the pine trees, and to the edge of the sea in a little more than two hours – swallowing everything in its passage. The Civil Protection agencies failed to respond to the situation or its immediate aftermath. An evacuation plan was never executed. State officials never took any responsibility.
This work holds ongoing timeliness and relevance not because it is about my story, or my experience. Although this is the origin of the work. But because it is about lifting the lid on how a Disaster leaves traces and scars that challenge our ethics, the mechanisms of our sources of truth and our society’s relationship to the wellbeing of its members.
Katerina is an artist based in Athens. She leads a lens-based practice that explores the relationship between space and narratives through long-term research projects. An exploration that expanded and developed during her decade long scenography practice, and evolved into incorporating a different medium. Her work often utilizes
public oral archives, fragmented narratives and the spaces they inhabit to retell stories that have been silenced or misrepresented.
Her first monograph, “The Fumes of Mars” will be published by GOST Books in the Summer of 2025. This work has won The Format Reviewers Choice Award 2022, was featured in the printed and online issue of the British Journal for Photography (BJP) that was presented in Paris Photo ‘21, was selected and featured for the COCA Project 2021, was shortlisted for the Belfast Dummy Award and Festival ’22, and was exhibited at LCC in London as part of the “Common Ground” Exhibition.
She holds a BSc in Mathematics & Theoretical Physics from Imperial College London, a BA in Design for Performce from Central Saint Martin’s and a MA with Distinction in Photojournalism & Documentary Photography from LCC.