Public Project
Eden in Ashes
Wednesday I was driving to Ventura to photograph the fire when I heard about the Skirball Fire in Bel Air, so I headed that direction, and finally arrived there after getting stuck in traffic for two hours. I began making photos of that fire, then the next night I headed to Ventura, where I slept a few hours at the house of an old friend only to learn the fire jumped the 101 Freeway that night.
I arrived in La Conchita later in the morning, but the fire had mostly moved on, and I headed up Highway 1 only to run into a wall of fire burning through a palm tree grove.
Over the next several days I documented the fire often arriving after the flames had subsided, but left behind smoldering devastation. I made this series of photographs, which I'm tentatively titling, "Eden in Ashes," since the fire burned part's Ojai that were once lush, and Southern California turned into a hellscape of fire and smoke as six fires burn, and as I write this, The Thomas Fire has scorched and blackened over 200,000 acres making it one of the worst fires in modern California history.
In 2018 I went back to California again, and I documented damage from fires in Northern California. I plan to keep going back to California to work on this project.
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