The most recent California fires devastated Los Angeles, engulfed the City of Angels in flames and burned it to the ground. As of my writing of this post, the fires are not yet done with the LA area, in part thanks to the winds that help the sparks travel far and wide to start new fires.

It all looks like an inferno, raging and racing up and down the West Coast, crisscrossing California, scorching homes and nature, and everything and everyone standing in its way.

And yet, the Getty Museum – The Getty – home of a vast collection of photographs documenting and preserving life, art and history, has been spared so far. It has remained a safe place for all those photographs and all that they represent. And that’s a blessing, although it might not seem like it, not in this moment and perhaps not to those who’ve lost everything but their lives in these fires.

Perhaps, in a way, the inferno that’s burning down the City of Angels is kind of a premonition of what it is to come and affect not only one city or state, but the entire country.

And in that unfortunate scenario, would we be able to find a safe place? Are our individual and collective histories going to survive, like the Getty Museum? Are we?

I guess we’ll find out….

As always, thanks for stopping by,

Alina Oswald