“Many of the people who survived the fires lost everything, including family photographs. Records of their lives were literally burned, relegating their past to a dreamlike stasis relying solely on whatever their memory will allow them to conjure. The collaborative portrait in this way is a reaffirmation that the things that were lost still remain with its memory keeper. Most of the portraits that I have made for this project are the result of months of conversations held between myself and the storyteller. Their portraits are a reflection of all our time spent sharing. The root of their message, the very thing they want to say, is revealed in their oral history as well as in their portrait. In this way, a photograph is not only a record of a single moment but is also a record of all the moments lost or un-imaged that came before it.”

Excerpt from The Fires, pub. October 2024, Art Journal Open, by Christopher López