When the Los Angeles fires broke out in January 2025, Nonny de la Peña knew she wanted to build a spatial archive. For the filmmaker and journalist, who had spent years exploring immersive approaches to real events, capturing the aftermath was a way to preserve places that would soon change or disappear. Rory Mitchell was pursuing a related idea: scanning the homes of friends and bringing their photographs and videos back into the ruins to convey something of the lives that had existed there. Their approaches would soon converge. But…
OUT OF THE ASHES: Capturing Los Angeles Before the Traces Disappear
