These images are not part of the Arles Festival.
They are the ones Jeff Dunas, present like every year at the Hôtel du Forum, that he took during the Los Angeles fires and which he shows to his friends. He writes.
I grew up in West Los Angeles about a 15 minute drive to the Pacific Palisades. I used to ride my bike up there with my friends. There was the Bay Theatre where we watched movies on Saturday’s. There was the ice cream shop and the hardware store, a cafe or two, a food market and some other stores. It was a sleepy little village then – a short 5 minute’s drive to the beaches on the Pacific Coast Highway. Over the years it retained its character. Of course it grew and became very desirable to live there. The high school had a physical education program that included surfing. I never knew of another school that offered surfing classes. It was idyllic. My friends from childhood went on to buy houses and raise families there. No one wanted to live elsewhere.
Then came the morning of January 7th of this year.
I remember the wind was intense where we live in West Hollywood and I again feared for Malibu where over the years there have been many terrible fires. This morning was unusual. Winds usually pick up at night and die down by late morning here but that morning was different. Very different. The wind became gale force by early afternoon. The fires started in the morning spreading for just a few hours, showering burning embers throughout igniting house after house until the village where I spent so many summer days as a kid was completely destroyed. We were put under evacuation orders multiple times over the next days along with my colleagues Greg Gorman, Mona Kuhn, Andrew Macpherson and many others. Fortunately our homes were not burned.
The January fires became the worst disaster in recent California history, possibly the equivalent of the great earthquakes and fires of the early 20th century. What remains is total loss. For many, who thought they were only evacuating for a short while only to return safely to their homes, all was lost forever. It was a nightmare, like the aftermath of a neutron bomb explosion. These pictures reveal all that is left of their happiness, of their daily lives. Now there is only emptiness. Imagine Neuilly destroyed in four hours.
Jeff Dunas
