Capturing the Spirit of a City on Fire

Online, personal accounts of loss gave way to stories about helping those in distress. Friendly, who’d been feeling helpless as he watched the apocalyptic news, observed this shift in his feed. “I was seeing all these donation sites and volunteer sites open up,” he told me. Someone posted a spreadsheet of places seeking volunteers. “I decided, I can’t sit here.” He went downtown, to 9ThirtyLA, an event space that had transformed into an evacuation and donation site, where he was assigned to sort offerings by category: water bottles, food, sanitary items, clothing for boys, clothing for girls. He found himself moved by the spirit of his fellow-volunteers, and decided to document the extraordinary moment in the city’s life.

Friendly shoots medium-format film, on a Pentax 645. “It really slows me down,” he said.“Everything becomes a lot more intentional. I’m taking one image, looking through the viewfinder and waiting for the moment and trying to capture that moment.” Over the next couple of weeks, he made his way down the list of volunteer sites, visiting as many as he could. At Altadena Girls a relief organization founded in the midst of the fires by a fourteen-year-old girl whose school had been destroyed, he said, each teen or tween was paired with a stylist and a makeup artist, who helped them rebuild their wardrobes and cosmetics collections. Meghan Markle and Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the First Partner of California, showed up; Gwyneth Paltrow sent product. The girls, Friendly said, were overwhelmed. “I saw lots of tears of gratitude and joy. These girls were getting brand-new stuff they probably couldn’t have afforded before. I heard some girls say that. I heard one of the stylists say, ‘Some of this stuff is nicer than anything I have.’ ”