Maxime Riché

(FR, 1982) lives and works in Paris, France.

On November 8, 2018, the Camp Fire megafire destroyed Paradise, a town in California (USA), in less than four hours. Caused by a short circuit on a power pole, it spread rapidly due to strong winds, heat, and dry vegetation. Camp Fire remains the deadliest wildfire in the United States, killing 86 people and destroying 18,800 buildings. On July 13, 2021, another megafire, the Dixie Fire, ignited near Paradise, although this time the opposing winds pushed it away from the town. This fire, the largest in California's history, burned 390,000 hectares over more than 100 days.

Maxime Riché visited Paradise in 2020 and then in 2021 to meet those who decided to rebuild their "paradise" in a place that now seems inhospitable. To sensitively convey the emotions of the survivors and the images that haunt them, he used film photography, intermittently employing infrared slide film. His fiery tones, flashbacks to the hell they lived through, remind us of the flames etched in their memories.

Navigating the borders between documentary and fiction, the Paradise series is an allegory about our capacity for adaptation. It gives us a glimpse into the next place that will have to undergo this slow healing process after disasters whose causes are increasingly human. It suggests our ever-growing separation from nature and our hubris in wanting to defy it at all costs.