How a National Geographic photographer captured 129 haunting portraits of fire survivors
Photographer Gideon Mendel is no stranger to natural disasters.
The fires that tore through parts of Los Angeles last January were one of the worst natural disasters the city has experienced. Estimates for just how much damage the fires cost vary, but one figure ballparked over $130 billion in property damage alone. Victims of the fire returned to homes reduced to rubble. Photographer Gideon Mendel was there to document those painful moments. Over the course of five weeks, Mendel interviewed about four to five families a day. His intimate portraits create catharsis for his subjects. Forced to be still for the camera, they quietly took in the scale of their loss and began to process a lifelong trauma.
Reporting a story from a disaster zone can be chaotic. How did you approach survivors and invite them to be subjects?
“[The] fires happened at the start of January. I arrived in Los Angeles on February the 13th. We were just trying to find the moment when people were returning.
I did a [social media] post with an example of five similar pictures from elsewhere. And the response to that was [an experience] I've never had. I don't think I've ever had that many kind of responses to an image on Instagram and Facebook. We were overwhelmed with them, with applicants. So the problem was less finding people than deciding who to choose.
I then worked for five weeks from that point, and there was a dramatic transition from that time. There was initially no noise; there was very little bird sound, animal sound. I was struck by how endless this kind of huge area of suburbia, American suburbia was, each area with its own particular character, but was completely wiped out and completely flattened. So it was a very dramatic scenario. Over five weeks, progressively there was more activity and noise. There was the start of the demolitions and by the end of five weeks there was constant noise of chainsaws and hammering. And so the audio landscape changed dramatically over that time with the physical landscape.
How do you frame your portraits?
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The nature of the portraiture I do is very particular, it's generally pretty wide angle. I always position people so we see the whole body. So you see the whole person in relationship to their house and the landscape around them.
[A ladder] often helps because you get a better sense of the landscape. I can use it to show people in relation to the environment. I use a ladder or often a burned chair. It was trying to find ways into the landscape. Low angles didn't really work, but it's really about how to position people in relation to the damage and the destruction.
If you look at the pictures, I'm always positioning people's heads very, very carefully. And often I'll figure out the composition before the people are even in the frame.
I was being very cognizant of the fact that people were returning to a site of trauma, a site of extreme trauma and very bad, difficult memories. Quite a few people said to me that when they were being photographed it was the first time [since the fires] they really cried or felt tears welling up. I was forcing them to be still, because normally when they're in those places, they are very busy and doing stuff and running around. And when I was asking for stillness for 10 or 20 minutes, the feelings of the surroundings really came through to them.
It's very important to me that people feel that they have a good experience being photographed by me, I don't want to feel like a trauma exploiter, but also I do like to portray people as somehow empowered even though it's a situation of such loss and damage. I don't want them to be helpless victims.
Each scenario, each portrait was a puzzle to unlock between me and Katja [my assistant]. Ideally, you'd meet the person beforehand. You would think about where you want the light, what time of day you would do it.
I think part of the reason so many people wanted so badly to participate is because I think normally, when you have a major life event, you have a funeral. There's a set kind of logic and there's a set series of events you need to do to process what’s happened. You need have a burial. There's a prescribed ritual when you've lost your house and you've lost everything. I think a lot of people felt somehow being photographed by me would bring them some sort of closure.
It's quite a strange thing. I think sometimes people just didn't really want to stop.
You were also photographing the scale of destruction in affected neighborhoods, driving through them to document ruined homes and scorched earth. Can you tell us what that experience was like?
I was just struck by the endlessness of it, the landscape. I have been to burnt towns and burnt areas, and this was maybe comparable to Colorado’s fires in 2022 where a huge fire destroyed a thousand homes. I've also worked in Greenville and other parts of California where probably two thirds of the town burned [in 2021], but it was a small town. I'm not a fan personally of drones. I like to be holding the camera and have my eye on the camera.
I was kind of in the back of the vehicle, with Katja [my producer] driving and driving at a very particular slow pace, so the landscape kind of unfolds in front of you. The audience is kind of exploring it and discovering it through my eyes.
You frequently photograph people grappling with the aftermath of natural disasters. What draws you to this work?
It's a very particular way of engaging and connecting. I suppose I always want people to be looking directly at the camera. It's very head on; it's very direct.
My parents were both German Jewish refugees who fled from Germany to South Africa. And both of them had huge trauma. My father lost his real father when he was an infant. He died fighting for Germany in the first World War, and then he lost his mother in the Holocaust. My mother made a very narrow escape. Her grandmother and three aunts and an uncle died in the Holocaust along with friends and the family. [My parents] wanted to push away any difficulty, and I think we can't really avoid it but that trauma bounces down the generations. I think maybe it's given me a kind of drive to put myself close to other people's trauma. And also an ability to translate that trauma. And my son says I have this weird superpower of being able to get up day after day and document other people's trauma.
I could have kept going for another month in terms of all the people who wanted to be photographed, but I think it was a very transformative experience for me. I think everyone I photographed really touched me. I really feel that I kind of carry them.
