Photos of disturbingly beautiful tintipo commemorate what was lost in Altadena

Following Eaton's fire, there are ghosts in Altadena. They are not literary ghosts, although that could depend on who you ask, but an army of figurative ghosts, such as lonely chimneys that mark the plots that once filled the hundred houses or the shells of the windows that once acted as community collection points. And while life soldiers in the community, with people who tend to gardens outside their homes still standard while others are filtered through debris, it is as if the entire community had gotten into the quiet duel.

While everyone has seen images of devastation, no photographer has captured sadness as well as Sunny millsA set decorator that lost his house in the fire. Skill in Tintype photography, Mills has leaned to its hobby since January 7, using a couple of cameras that gave it and any nervous energy that you have to direct the community, shooting photos of Altadenanos with the structures they have lost.

Sunny Mills' Burke and James Watson 5×7 Chamber 5×7.

(Sunny mills)

Around the 1850s, Tintype Photography captures a fixed image on a thin metal plate coated with dark lacquer or enamel. Mills takes the photos with his 5×7 camera from Burke and James Watson, given to her after the fires of some friends who also venture into Tintype photography, asking the subjects to stop only for a second while the take is found. With a dark mobile room in the trunk of your car, you can develop the plates on the site, which allows the subjects to see their ethereal black and white image in a matter of minutes. And although he has to take the images home to be scanned and chemically “fixed”, he plans to return each dish to his subjects.

Mills says that it spent the first six weeks or so after the fires felt “very lost and disconnected from myself”, as if it were going through an identity crisis after losing everything I owned, including everything I needed for your business. When her friend and mentor from Tintype arrived in the city, the couple was on the old property of Mills to sink. When Mills prepared her new camera for self -portrait among the ashes, she was surprised at what she calls “the dramatic result.”

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Truvonna Tamiel, second from the left, and her fiancee, Kiwan Cole, right, with Truvonna's daughter, Tyra Butler, on the left, and grandchildren Ariyah Simpson, left forward, and Kadyn Williams. “My mother bought this house more than 50 years ago, where she raised her children, grandchildren and great -grandchildren,” Tamiel told Mills. (Sunny mills)

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Mary Ann Mcafee lived in her home in Altadena for 30 years. (Sunny mills)

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Rosanna Kvernmo Hockin, on the left, and her husband Kevin Hockin, owners of Side Pie, with her daughter Judith, in the ruins of her Pizza restaurant. “We have customers who have a permanent order every week, the same day, at the same time, for years,” Hockin wrote in a goutme fund collection. (Sunny mills)

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Anthony Ruffin, left, with his wife Jonni Miller in his burned property. Both are social workers who have long served the homeless community. (Sunny mills)

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Rupert García, on the left, is in his property burned with his daughter Alexandra García. (Sunny mills)

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Tempe Hale, left, with her husband Marcos Durian, in her burned home. The couple met when the neighbors walk their dogs. (Sunny mills)

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Angi Franklin is in the midst of what remains of his childhood's house, where he lived with his mother and his son before Eaton's fire. (Sunny mills)

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Kira Chapman, on the left, and her husband Galvin Chapman meets where once was her condominium. Galvin Chapman grew up in a nearby house, which also burned in Eaton's fire. (Sunny mills)

The artists stop around a metal spiral staircase in the debris of the Zorthian ranch.

“The image was so beautiful,” says Mills. “It also felt like this type of crucial moment of 'ok, this is real', because every time I was driving [to Altadena before]I would think: “Please, let all this be a dream”, but when I saw the photograph, it finally sank. “

Wanting to give others the same chance to close, Mills offered free portraits services in a neighborhood group called Beautiful Altadena. In a few days, she signed up for more than 80 people. Now, she is using Calendously To schedule your sessions, which about four days a week, even all day on Saturdays and Sundays.

“He has become snowed to this best healing project, because I began to meet people in their homes, and they would tell me their story and then took their photograph,” she says. “Since I am doing everything in the act and the photo develops just before their eyes, many people end up crying. It has become this really emotional connection that we are sharing and also a really intense healing trip, but we are realizing that we are all in this together.”

Somehow, says Mills, taking the photos is like meditation. Since the process is somewhat slow and methodical, it requires approach and stillness. Processing the images, from covering the plaque to presenting the developing image, can feel a bit like a ceremony. Each shot is a unique time over time, and the plates are sometimes imbued not only with the emotional weight of the image, but also dust stains patey by dump trucks that pass from debris.

Two people in protection teams in a burned lot.

Mills says that some of those garbage truck drivers have approached her, including one that asked her to shoot her already her crew. He agreed, saying that he hopes to capture all the scope of the disaster. He would like to make a book of all the photos one day, or at least show them somewhere. “There is only one soul in the photos of Tintype that is not really captured in any other medium,” says Mills.

Dorothy Garcia would certainly agree. Altadenan, García, Garcia, moved to the community when he was a child because he was one of the few places where his parents, who were Japanese and Mexicans, were able to buy a house. His family left the roots over the decades, just for his three homes to destroy the fires. When he saw Mills's publication in the beautiful Altadena, Garcia decided to register. He had had a small collection of tintipos at his home, and had always admired the art shape.

“There is something in the process that is a strange manipulation of time,” says Garcia. “It's now, but it seems that it could be a long time ago. It is also timeless. It's like, 'how are we going to capture the last 60 years of life and all the people who were here before us?' Taking this photo seemed a noble and beautiful way to capture how this disaster looks. “

Three adults and a baby standing in front of a burned building

Garcia had not returned home from the fire, but decided the morning of the filming that would finally make the walk. Posing at home about the Christmas tree lane with his partner Tom Harding and his daughter Chloe García, he clung to the 5 -week girl of Chloe, Grayson García Figueroa. Chloe had evacuated Altadena seven months of pregnancy, and Dorothy says that having Grayson to take care of has been one of the only things that has prevented him from immersing himself in the sadness of all his loss.

Before the fire, when he planned his daughter's baby shower, García managed to scan some photos of his parents and grandparents. Those digital copies are the only old photos that have left, for what the Tintype de Mills sees as the first step to create a family album for your grandson. While Garcia watches Mills photograph his brother, Rupert, and his daughter, Alexandria García Rosewood, standing in the place where his house sat once, looks at Grayson in his arms.

“I see my brother and I see my niece, but I also see my parents here,” says Garcia. “I see the future and I see the past. You will really love these, a small one. This is a new beginning for us too.”

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