Many of Marie Shannon’s photographs are located inside; in 'Garden Fire', Shannon expands the boundary of the home to encompass the backyard too. The danger of an outdoor blaze is quietened by the privacy and domestic scale of this bonfire, but there is an uneasy tone underlying this image, hinted at by the strange angle of Shannon’s camera or perhaps the ground itself – at first glance, it is difficult to tell which, confused further by the drifting direction of the smoke. Shannon’s commitment to what she describes as the “emotional density and weight” of photography amplifies otherwise ordinary objects and events, and calls into question how reliable images are for telling us what is really going on.

(Jane Wallace, 2023)