Devasting Fires in Los Angeles 2025

Thank you for your messages of concern over the last two weeks.

My family and I are OK, and we've been staying with various friends over the last two weeks.

Our home of 30 years was totally destroyed in the Palisades fire. All of the furniture and Art, archaeological objects collected from around the world,our children's childhood artwork and mementos, Recordings of my father's draft of his unpublished novel, my music, and music systems, my guitars, and an endless number of things that you don't miss until they are gone. 

Of course, my studio was completely destroyed, including my computers, monitors, scanners, hard drives, printers, tripods, full canon system of bodies and lenses, as well as my new Hasseblad X1d with its four lenses and paraphenalia.  

Some of my prior years of film work had been scanned into digital form And all my recent digital camera work, was backed up in the cloud so that part is OK.

The toughest thing about this experience is that all of the archives of Kodachrome slides I have created over 40 years of work are gone. These are irreplaceable images from extended journeys throughout the world, including Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Bali, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Japan, Nepal, Bhutan, Darjeeling, Sikkim, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Egypt, Cyprus, Israel, Greece, western Europe, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Belize, across the United States. and other experiences too numerous to mention.  

All of this is gone.

To paraphrase writer Stephen Crane, there is nothing like total loss to focus the mind.

The odd part about this disaster is that it is so absolute. There is nothing to resist or fight against. It simply is what it is.

In December, I had been in the process of retiring from my law practice to devote my full-time to photography and writing projects. I will still do this, but years of notes and ideas and drafts no longer exist, except in my mind.

I am trying to stay positive, and to view this experience as a complete sweep of my prior life and an opening of new doors to explore.

In mourning the loss of so much of my life's work, I began to realize that the photographic film itself is separate from the experience I had when making the picture. That experience stays with us, and will stay with us so long as we keep it alive. 

My recent book,  Event Horizon, starts with a passage by Buckminster Fuller: 

      "The wave is not the water.

      The water merely tells us of the       

      passing of the wave"

I am exploring the concept that the film I lost does not define or restrict the experience it portrayed. 

If the experience is not the physical film, but the process of making of the image, that film may not be essential to the resurrection of the embeded experience, which can live by itself, and which can be a subject of interest all its own.

I am writing at this length because you are the few people who can understand what has happened with me.

I do intend to remain on the board, but I will need a little breathing space to figure out what to do and how to do it.

Thank you very much for keeping me in the loop.  I look forward to rejoining you when the time is right.

With warm regards,

Eric

ERIC LAWTON
photographs