The Eaton Fire swept through Altadena in January 2025, destroying thousands of buildings and transforming entire neighborhoods into ruins almost overnight. Unlike most of the places in Modern Ruins, these were not structures slowly abandoned over decades. They were homes, businesses, churches and schools that had been occupied only days before, making Altadena a different kind of ruin: the immediate aftermath of disaster and a community confronting what had been lost.

I first photographed Altadena at the end of January 2025, just before the fire was fully contained, and returned as the community began recovering and rebuilding. After more than fifty years photographing places abandoned long before I arrived, I was suddenly photographing ruins while the people who had lived in them were still returning to see what remained.