In one roaring breath, the Eaton fire rendered my family’s home of thirty-plus years into smoke. That house in Altadena was our place of being for three generations. Within it lived my life’s work, captured on silver and celluloid, proof of us, of here, of then.

In the aftermath, I walked the footprint of my life on scorched ground. The loss was a physical presence. I knew art would be the path through desolation, but I did not yet know the vocabulary.