Jen Osborne sent us her series titled Prelude, A Step Toward Fire. It is presented as follow.
The Women’s Fire Prep Academy (WFPA) is an annual training event for candidates interested in professional firefighting. It’s hosted at the LA County Fire Department (LACoFD) headquarters in East Los Angeles each year.
Founded in 2015 by five female firefighters, WFPA incorporates a bootcamp-style atmosphere. It prepares women over the age of 18 to enter a male-dominated workforce. According to LACoFD, nearly 3200 fire professionals are employed with the organization. Less than three percent of that workforce is female.
Women are not typically represented within the fire service, but WFPA provides them with a glimpse at what it means to be a firefighter. Diversity-oriented programs are disappearing across America after Donald Trump issued executive orders to end numerous policies. WFPA is now a rare initiative. But it’s not at risk because it functions on donations and equipment inherited from LA County’s Fire Department.
Despite the chaos and trauma that the 2024-2025 fire season inflicted upon Southern California, WFPA carried on. Their 2025 program was held last February and March, just weeks after catastrophic fires hit Los Angeles in January. A few months before that, the Mountain fire also destroyed 182 homes in Camarillo, a city in Ventura County. As those fires appeared on international news, locals were forced to watch swathes of their city burn – whether it was in-person or on the TV.
This photo series features portraits of several of the 70+ women who attended WFPA 2025. They stand against a concrete wall in a training tower wearing their protective equipment, holding firefighting tools during an exercise. These women live in the Greater Los Angeles Area and experienced how fire demolished parts of their city. Their pictures are intertwined with images from that catastrophic 2024-2025 fire season — a monumental tragedy that motivated many to serve their communities.
The title of this work is Prelude, A Step Toward Fire. Prelude is a word derived from Latin. It typically refers to a musical introduction. Prelude can also signify an atmospheric, broader event which precedes something more significant. The candidates in this series know that the contemporary landscape of Los Angeles includes fire, yet they have not yet fought it. But they hope to do so, soon.
This series foreshadows the likely reality of what these women will contend with if they are successful in their quest to fight fire. Because WFPA is just one step in a candidate’s professional firefighting journey, it is unclear if these women will become paid firefighters. If they continue this journey, these women will eventually face the gruelling challenge of passing The Tower — the final academy that future firefighters must complete. WFPA helps them get there because women want to be heroes, too.
