A large wildfire has a very distinctive sound. No one can tell you unless they have been in one. It is a sound that can haunt you…’

One of the deadliest wildfires ever recorded took place on 23 July 2018 just 30km from the historical centre of Athens in Greece. Artist Katerina Angelopoulou survived the fire and her forthcoming book The Fumes of Mars combines her photographs with personal testimonies from other survivors, timelines, maps and reports. With these materials Angelopoulou attempts to weave together a collective narrative of the events to better understand the violent disconnect between her own experience and the ‘official’ account of the disaster in which facts were concealed and victims held culpable.

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The book opens with black and white photographs showing the aftermath of the fire alongside with testimonies of the survivors. These are followed by Angelopoulou’s photographs taken as the disaster unfolded overlayed with her timeline of events. Collected evidence on the events follow including aerial maps, topographical information, lists of the victims with location and cause of death, weather and aircraft reports, CCTV and news coverage images, information from the State Investigator report and information on the ongoing trial. The final images of the book are of Angelopoulou’s personal artefacts after the fire such as remnants of jewellery, books and glasses. This assembled evidence is embedded with importance because after the fire, the truth of the victims and their families was questioned multiple times—in the public narrative, facts were concealed and re-produced with false arguments blaming residents and victims.

‘The story of Mati is not only a story of cruel indifference and buck-passing. It is also a story of individual moral courage and responsibility, made accessible by aggressive reporting. The press can demand accountability in ways that compromised and sluggish legal procedures cannot. It can rip apart the entangling net of cultural excuses and botched processes that cloud the public’s access to information.’ Michael Herzfeld from the book’s essay

‘A second re-traumatisation took place in the immediate aftermath by a number of media outlets and the government, that were controlling the public narrative, when they refused to witness the ‘true’ event in its aftermath. The re-victimisation further took the form of raising bureaucratic walls in every attempt of the victims to reclaim their lives.’
- Katerina Angelopoulou