British photographer Sarah Pickering likes to see stuff burn. So much so that she melted some of her equipment while lingering overlong in the doorway of a burning room while shooting forensic fires at the Fire Service College in Gloucestershire. Sarah Pickering once considered becoming a forensics photographer, but quickly realized she didn’t have the stomach for it. Fortunately for us, Pickering explored her fascination through other routes. The first photo here was made at the Fire Service College and documents a forensics training exercise. The sets, called burn units, are meticulously constructed inside shipping containers, and planned according to a narrative that points to the cause of the conflagration. The fire investigators must uncover the cause afterwards, by clues left in the ashes. In the case of the first photograph here, the cause of the fire was a cigarette.
The following explosion photographs were made during “shopping trips” in ...
