Fireworks Bring Out the Kid in All of Us
Fireworks! How fantastic they are and how fascinating to the eyes and minds of children. The reason I started documenting fireworks with my camera was because I sort of missed the fireworks that I grew up with as a kid.
My town used to have its homegrown pyrotechnicians and what they did with black powder back then was just out of this world. Nobody in my town makes fireworks anymore. Lucky for me, a town like Tultepec in Mexico still exists and every year I travel faithfully to get my fireworks fix. Throughout the world, there must be communities that offer that as well.
When it comes to fireworks, I realize as an adult that I stilll have the eyes and mind of a child. Even small fireworks hold me mesmerized for the brief time they are burning and moving. Imagine how much more the larger fireworks that burst high up in the sky like blooming flowers on high speed. No wonder the Japanese call them "hanabi", or flowers of fire.
What is the reason of this fascination? I guess we intuitively recognize the hidden power in the world of nature. After all, it´s the power of fire which is the source and origin of all existence. Didn´t everything get rolling in the universe with a BIG BANG? Without the sun, life would not be possible on earth. But fire is a fearful power when it is not contained, as in the great fires caused by the1906 San Francisco earthquake or in the fires of Tokyo towards the end of World War II.
Yet for all its fear, it fascinates us. In the form of fireworks, however, we find not its fear but only its fascination. At the same time, fireworks, more than other forms of fire, leave in us a feeling of fleetingness. Just as we realize their magical appearance, like the sudden unfolding of a bright flower in the darkness, then they disappear.
I have followed the process of building fireworks and setting them up, in the case of Mexican tower fireworks, and it´s unbelieveable the amount of hours of labor needed to pull off a display like that. Yet as the crowd watches the luminous spectacle unfold, what the team of pyros built in the course of hundreds of hours, it´s all over in 15 minutes at the most.
I for one can never say I have had enough of fireworks. I always look forward to the next fireworks show with my eyes wide open and excited as when I was a kid.
Manuel Rivas
TFC Host
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