THE NEW YORKER
BURNS
Nadel’s photographs of snow-covered forests in mountainous northwester Montana that have been burned in wildfires look like ink drawings or etchings. From a distance, perspective collapses, and the leafless trees are nothing more than thousands of thin lines – tough whiskers on the landscape. Although these are color photographs, the effect is crisp, graphic black-and-white; even at closer range, the trees appear nearly colorless. Working with a traditional four-by-five view camera, Nadel turns out images with a brilliant clarity that’s most remarkable in the smaller prints here, where the forest seems poised between devastation and rebirth.
Review by Vince Aletti, March 28, 2011