Using the pine tree as a metaphor and through a photographic lens, the video essay RAKINGLIGHT/ BURN examines the transience of nature, photography, and our own existence.

Taking a starting point is dead pine trees, ”silver pine trees”, which can remain upright, anchored by their roots for centuries after death, providing a habitat for about half of all red-listed species in Swedish forests. However, in contemporary plantation forests dead wood is cleared away, which is devastating for ecosystems and the environment.
We use the dry pine trees as a metaphor for photography and raise questions about the forestindustry and the absence of death in modern industrial forests.In the second part of the video essay we draw an association to Sokushinbutsu — an asceticBuddhist tradition in northern Japan where monks, from the 12th century onward, practice a ritual and diet based partly on resin to mummify themselves from the inside. The goal is to become a “Buddha in one’s own body”.

“Weronika Bela and Ivar Hagren collaborate as Hagren/Bela. They primarily work with analogblack and white photography, utilizing both traditional and experimental techniques, alongsidemediums such as drawing, video and spatial installation. In several works they take on a more-than-human perspective on plants and trees that, like the photographic apparatus, function as a light-sensitive medium. The works Silvertallar (2025) as well as the films Efterbelysning and Släpljus (2025) involve the organic photosynthesis of plants and the organizing photography of the camera, an artistic symbiosis that expands our understanding of both. The seemingly dead tree and the mummified monk live on and at the same time die through the photograph as a transparent medium.”

– A Field Guide to the Dark Flora, Timo Menke