Paradise

Paradise – On November 8, 2018, the megafire Camp Fire ravaged Paradise, a California town of 26,000 people 140 km north of Sacramento, in less than four hours. Caused at dawn by a short-circuit on a nearly century-old Pacific Gas & Electric electricity pylon, its flames spread across this Sierra Nevada highland under the effect of strong winds, heat and abundant dry vegetation. “Megafires, under the effect of climate change, no longer spare any region of the planet. On November 8, 2018, the megafire Camp Fire ravaged the town of Paradise, California, killing 86 people. In 2021, the Dixie Fire broke out under the same power lines in the surrounding hills. I met the people who are rebuilding their “paradise” in a place that is now brutally inhospitable. To capture their emotions, I use infrared film whose flamboyant colors punctuate the tenuous normalcy of a life they are trying to regain, with fear of the next megafire in their stomachs. “Paradise is a parable about our ability to rebuild ourselves after fires whose causes are increasingly human. Maxime Riché” Maxime Riché