Shira Gold explains to me that “some people called it a moth epidemic.” Others called it a pandemic. Shira Gold is referring to a local, smaller event that occurred at the same time the Covid pandemic.
The photographer observed moths in trees and near lights throughout the outbreak. Gold came face to face with the phenomenon, which some have dubbed “Mothpocalypse”, when she visited Rice Lake in North Vancouver. She was amazed at how the water surface was covered in tiny insects. She recalls that “they covered the lake as if it were an ornate, lace-like cloth.” There must have been thousands of them, sometimes laying wings-to-wing. No sounds were heard, only stillness. Visual stillness. Stillness audible. “They had all died.”
It was both beautiful and sad. She was taken aback. Around the world another pandemic was raging in the background. By the time the moths were back the following summer, millions of people had been killed by the coronavirus.
Like many of us Gold navigated an uncertain and frightening year filled with shifting rules and regulations. She felt pushed in many directions. She couldn’t help but think about the moths, ethereal and haunting, on the lake. These insects represented the fragility and preciousness of life. But more than that, the moths became a symbol of “our universal desire to find light in the darkness.” Like butterflies, they are symbols of adaptation, renewal and survival.
by a Thread grew out of these quiet, lonely months. The photos are composites created from photographs taken at Rice Lake. She collected materials including silk threads and cocoons from The Silk Weaver Studio in Granville Island, Vancouver. She placed them on her scanner along with the sewing threads and then painstakingly assembled the final images in Photoshop using both scanned elements and photographs.
Gold says, “I knew that there had to be inorganic and linear lines from which the moths could hang, escape, or almost strung.” Gold explains, “I knew there needed to be severe linear and inorganic lines that the moths were almost strung from, hung on to, or escaped from.”
Gold worked while her children were taking online classes or when they went to sleep. She describes the process of creating these images as being like assembling a huge puzzle with many small pieces. The process was therapeutic. She found that making pictures helped her to cope. The artist says, “I’ve always found that when we’re open to beauty, it can be seen in the midst of great struggle, transition, grief, and growth.” She released her series the day after the restrictions related to the pandemic were lifted. It was about time.
The “moth epidemic” has ended. The Western hemlock Looper Moths are native in British Columbia. This moth outbreak benefits the landscape. Scientists say climate change will likely make these moths more intense and frequent, which will have an impact on the ecosystem. In 2021 for instance, a severe drought affected parts of B.C. and the extreme heat increased pressure on the trees.