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In the wake of the Eaton fire, there are ghosts in Altadena. Not literal ghosts — though that could depend on whom you ask — but an army of figurative phantoms, like the lonely chimneys that mark the plots that century-old homes once filled or the shells of storefronts that once acted as community gathering spots. And while life soldiers on in the community, with people tending to gardens outside their still-standing homes while others filter through debris, it’s as if the entire community has gone into quiet mourning.
While everyone’s seen images of the devastation, no photographers have captured the sadness quite as well as Sunny Mills, a set decorator who lost her home in the fire. Skilled in tintype photography, Mills has leaned into her hobby since Jan. 7, using a pair of cameras she was given and whatever nervous energy she has to head out into the community, shooting pictures of Altadenans with the structures they’ve lost.
Around since the 1850s, tintype photography captures a still image on a thin metal plate coated with dark lacquer or enamel. Mills takes the photos with her Burke & James Watson 5x7 camera — given to her after the fires by some friends who also dabble in tintype photography — asking subjects to stand still for just one second while she snags the shot. With a mobile darkroom in her car’s trunk, she can develop the plates on-site, allowing subjects to see their ethereal black-and-white image within minutes. And though she has to take the images home to be scanned and chemically “fixed,” she plans to return each plate to its subjects.
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Mills says she spent the first six weeks or so after the fires feeling “very lost and disconnected from myself,” like she was going through an identity crisis after losing everything she owned, including everything she needed for her business. When her friend and tintype mentor came to town, the pair went to Mills’ old property to poke around. When Mills set up her new-to-her camera for a self-portrait among the ashes, she was surprised at what she calls “the dramatic result.”
“The picture was so beautiful,” Mills says. “It also felt like this sort of pivotal moment of, ‘OK, this is real,’ because every time I would drive up [to Altadena before], I’d think, ‘Please let all this be a dream,’ but when I saw the photograph, it finally sunk in.”
Wanting to give others the same shot at closure, Mills offered free portrait services on a neighborhood Facebook group called Beautiful Altadena. Within a few days she had more than 80 people signed up. Now, she’s using Calendly to schedule her shoots, which she does about four days a week, including all day Saturday and Sunday.
“It’s snowballed into this greater healing project, because I started meeting up with people at their houses, and they’d tell me their story and then I’d take their photograph,” she says. “Since I’m doing it all on the spot and the photo develops right before their eyes, a lot of people end up crying. It’s become this really emotional connection that we’re sharing and also a really intense healing journey, but we’re realizing that we’re all in this together.”
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In some ways, Mills says, taking the photos is like meditation. Since the process is somewhat slow and methodical, it requires focus and stillness. Processing the pictures, from coating the plate to presenting the developing image, can feel a bit like a ceremony. Each shot is a singular moment in time, and plates are sometimes imbued with not just the emotional weight of the image but also flecks of dust kicked up by passing dump trucks full of debris.
Mills says she’s even been approached by some of those dump truck drivers, including one who asked her to shoot him and his crew. She gladly agreed, saying she’s hoping to capture the whole scope of the disaster. She’d like to make a book of all the photos some day, or at least display them somewhere. “There’s just a soul in tintype photos that really isn’t captured in any other medium,” Mills asserts.
Dorothy Garcia would certainly agree. A longtime Altadenan, Garcia moved to the community as a child because it was one of the few places where her parents — who were Japanese and Mexican — were able to buy a home. Her family put down roots over the decades, only to have all three of their homes destroyed by fires. When she saw Mills’ post on Beautiful Altadena, Garcia decided to sign up. She’d had a small collection of tintypes in her home, and she’d always admired the art form.
“There’s just something about the process that is a weird manipulation of time,” Garcia says. “It’s now, but it seems like it could be a long time ago. It’s timeless too. It’s like, ‘How are we going to capture the last 60 years of life and all the people who were here before us?’ Doing this photo just seemed like a noble and beautiful way to capture how this disaster looks.”
Garcia hadn’t been back to her home since the fire but decided the morning of the shoot that she would finally make the trek. Posing at her home above Christmas Tree Lane with partner Tom Harding and daughter Chloe Garcia, she clutched Chloe’s 5-week-old-son, Grayson Garcia Figueroa. Chloe had evacuated Altadena seven months pregnant, and Dorothy says having Grayson to care for has been one of the only things that has kept her from getting mired down in the sadness of all her loss.
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Before the fire, when she was planning her daughter’s baby shower, Garcia managed to scan some photos of her parents and grandparents. Those digital copies are the only old photos she has left, so she views Mills’ tintype as the first step toward creating a family album for her grandson. As Garcia watches Mills photograph her brother, Rupert, and his daughter, Alexandria Garcia Rosewood, standing in the spot where their house once sat, she looks down at Grayson in her arms.
“I see my brother and I see my niece, but I see my parents here too,” Garcia says. “I see the future and I see the past. You’re gonna really love these, little one. This is a new beginning for us too.”
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