
© Kevin Twomey – http://www.kevintwomey.com
Kevin Twomey recently worked on a project that was unlike any other he had experienced in his career. It was called “The People Burn Project.” A project created by Fitzgerald + Co. for Bulwark, a company that make flame-resistant clothing. Their message is powerful, “Because people aren’t fireproof.”
A mere description of the project could never do it justice so be sure to link to the Bulwark site to watch the 8 month time-lapse video, review the stills from the day of the burn and to watch the video about the project.
Here is what Kevin had to say about the project:
“In April I went to Los Angeles to photograph a paper sculpture, 16’ in diameter, built by Jeff Nishinaka, an incredibly talented, world-renown artist. Taller than me by a couple of feet and as long a van, the structure took 8 months to build, 2 days to piece together, 2 days to photograph in the studio, but only minutes to burn.
The project was part of a campaign, created by Fitzgerald + Co. for the company Bulwark who makes flame-resistant apparel. The message was wonderfully simple: paper is no less fragile than life.
With a very tight schedule, needing to photograph numerous angles in a day, we decided we would turn the set into a giant 16′ lazy susan and spin it around until we got the right lighting and camera position. It was a perfect and simple solution.
Artist Jeff Nishinaka had created such wonderful detail and character in the figures that the lighting approach for these figures was obvious: bring these figures to life by bringing out as much detail and dimensionality as possible.
After the still shots of the sculpture were complete it was dismantled and reassembled in a quarry outside of LA. The final step to this project was filming it while it burned into nothing. Watching this was quite extraordinary. As it was burning I glanced over at the artist. I figured he would be sad to watch so many hours of his work go up in smoke but I was surprised to see that he was enjoying the process from beginning to end.”

© Kevin Twomey – http://www.kevintwomey.com

© Kevin Twomey – http://www.kevintwomey.com

© Kevin Twomey – http://www.kevintwomey.com

© Kevin Twomey – http://www.kevintwomey.com