Jane Fulton Alt is a fine art photographer in the living and working in the Chicago area. She had several artist residencies at Ragdale which is located in the former Howard Van Doren Shaw’s estate overlooking a beautiful prairie in Lake Forest, Illinois. During her first residency restoration ecologists from a local organization, the Lake Forest Open Lands, were conducting a small controlled burn on the property.

Her work in The Burn---a series of images of a controlled prairie burn---is poetic, surreal, mysterious as well as lyrical.

All of the properties are part of a land trust located in Lake Forest, Illinois and run by the Lake Forest Open Lands Association whose mission is to conserve the natural environment through land acquisition, habitat restoration, environmental education and conservation advocacy. They have acquired over 800 acres of local native landscapes, including prairies, savannas, woodlands and wetlands.

Fulton has been photographing this series for four years. It has resulted in books. Uncontrolled bush fires in Australia have a much darker aspect to them. Although the new bush comes out of the trees that are burnt and die, there is much destruction to human property, humans and to animals from a raging wild fire.