"Yeah, everything else, you know, when I think about the books, that was like the big loss, but it's like, how could I have gotten started and which books would I have taken if I had the chance? You know, I didn't have the luxury of that kind of time. It was just kind of like, well, I hope it's here, and now that it's not, it's like, eh. When I start thinking about the titles that were on that shelf, I go, oh God, yeah, I lost that one. Oh, I lost that one too. And it just… I can't go there for too long because it just gets very depressing.
But yeah, most of the stuff that I wish I had taken really, other than photograph of my dad. Yeah. I think that's the only other thing I would probably, I wish I'd grabbed that, you know, but it just wasn't, it was a crazy 20 minutes, 20 or 30 minutes of scrambling out of the house."
Intro:
Greetings and welcome back to the Camera Cafe Show, the podcast where we brew up inspiration for your photography journey. I'm Tom Jacob and behind the scenes, as always, are Tatiana Malovana and Richard Clark pouring this all into a wonderful episode. Today, we have a guest whose work in photography and storytelling has inspired countless creatives. Ibarionex Perello.
For almost 20 years, Ibarionex has been the voice behind ‘The Candid Frame’, a sure favorite of mine, and one of the longest running and most respected photography podcast out there. He's a photographer, journalist, educator, workshop leader, and writer who has spent his career helping others find their creative voice.
But recently, past January this year, his own world has turned upside down when he and his wife lost his home and studio in Southern California due to the Eaton wildfires. So, I got an email out to him to see how in any way we can give back and help out, and we made the following recording from his temporary new home.
I've always admired how Ibarionex approaches interviews as he lets conversation unfold naturally, without a rigid plan, making every discussion feel authentic and deeply personal. In the spirit of his approach, I came into this conversation without any prepared question, simply following what our discussion would let us.
We will talk about his life in photography from shooting on the streets of LA to teaching the craft, the evolution of his Candid Frame podcast, and what he's learned from interviewing the greats over the years, what happened the night of the Eton fire, how it changed everything for them and that meaning of resilience, how he's moving forward now, and what's next in his journey of life.
This conversation is deep, real, and important, people. It's about photography, creativity, and the power of community in times of crisis. Ibarionex has given so much to the photography world, now, in a small way we can give back, and for that, check out our show notes on how to do it.
But for now, grab a coffee, and let's dive into this conversation with Ibarionex Perello.
Tom: Welcome to our show tonight Ibarionex.
Ibarionex: Thank you, man. It’s a pleasure to join you today.
Tom: It's my pleasure. I mean, your show, I've been listening to it for years. I love the way you talk to photographers. I love the concept of your whole show and it's sure been an inspiration. I know for us it was to also start a podcast and talk to photographers.
Ibarionex: Thank you, that’s great to hear.
Tom: I think you will hit it a lot. You know, life, like I told you in the email that I would've loved to record this podcast episode for something else, for another reason. We will talk now about you, about life, about your work and about photography. But we will also touch on something more personal, the Eton wildlife fires that took your home and your studio.
Thank you for sharing your story with us tonight.
Ibarionex: Well, thank you for asking me. I appreciate that. Better circumstances would've been nicer, but you know, it is what, it's at this point.
Tom: Before we start Ibarionex, you have one dog or two? You have one dog, Zoey?
Ibarionex: We have. Yeah. Well, no, Zoey passed away last year, last February. So now we have Gracie, who we adopted when she was three years old. And she was a rescue and we picked her up I think in November or December. We haven't had it very long.
Tom: How was she with all the weeks that now have passed?
Ibarionex: We had just gotten her, we're trying to train her, you know, 'cause, I don't know how long she had been on the street, and she's a park greyhound, so she has a lot of energy and trying to get her to down was kind of difficult. And she's crate trained. But with the fires, we were staying in a hotel first, and then later a small Airbnb. So she had to spend a lot of time in her crate. And with a dog with that much energy, it's a bit crazy.
But now that we have, we're renting a house in Pasadena, she has a yard in the back. So we train her, and she has more time in the yard to run around and do zoomies. And now we're just working on getting her to stay in her bed when we're in the living room. 'cause she's a very needy dog. She will paw you and lick you. So getting her to stay in the bed, in the living room, is our challenge right now. You know, with any dog who's a rescue, you know, you have to go through that, that period of training. It's not like you have it as a pup and you get to train him from the very beginning. There's a lot of work, but we don't mind it. She's a sweet dog.
Tom: I heard this before from people who have these greyhounds. I have three dogs, but they are Pomeranian dogs. They're tiny, tiny dogs.
Ibarionex: Oh, right, tiny. Okay.
Tom: It's fun really to think that they are such active dogs and they can run very fast, but at the same time, they like to rest a lot.
You ever take her on walks when you go to take pictures?
Ibarionex: No, not when I go to make pictures though, that 's impossible. I need to give her my full attention. With other dogs that could have done that 'cause they were a lot calmer. But you know, she gets her walks and we just get to focus on the walk. Yeah. She would be too much of a distraction for me, to be able to make photographs.
Tom: Well, wonderful companions they are. With three dogs and I have to count now, three cats, there's always something going on in the house.
Ibarionex, for someone, if there is somebody listening to photography podcasts who doesn't know you, how would you describe yourself?
Ibarionex: In terms of what I do, you know, I wear several different hats. I'm a photographer, a writer, I'm a educator. I'm a podcaster. I don't do one, just one, one thing, but they all revolve around photography. My nine to five I work as a photographer for the Huntington Museum Library and Botanical Gardens here in Southern California. I digitize a lot of things that are in the collection, so that's artwork, letters, books, things like that. And those are used by researchers who use, you know, the wealth of materials that they have at the Huntington.
And then for well over two decades, probably three, I've been working as a photographer, as a magazine editor, as a writer, writing multiple books on the subject of photography, and countless magazine articles. And in 2006 I started the Candid Frame, which we talked about earlier, which is where I interview photographers and have, in all, I think it's well over 600 something interviews from all genres. You know, modern contemporary periods of photography, which has been, you know, a passion project for me, something I really have enjoyed
You know, it's lovely to have the chance to talk to people whose work I admire, some of whom are people who I grew up with, from, you know, by looking at their books and looking at their images and magazines and know, it continues to be a big, big part of my life and I'm glad to have returned finally to production of the show after, you know, the fires that you mentioned.
Tom: I think, for me personally, when I started the podcast, I never thought it would grow out to what it is now. I mean, I was clear that this is not a thing you do for money, this is a thing because you like to do it, it's like another hobby. But I thought it was only: I'm going to do an interview with someone and I'm going to publish it online.
But it becomes a part of yourself because every time I talk with a photographer, every time he or she wants to make me go out and try this and do something different, or think about something different. I can only imagine you're doing this for so many years, what it feels like.
Ibarionex: Yeah. Yeah. I was kinda like you when I started the show. Part of me knew it would be successful, but I didn't know what that meant. I knew there was an audience for it because at the time podcasts had been around for probably a year, maybe two at the most.You know, I was listening of course, to all the photography podcasts, which were ones like Martin Bailey Photography, tips from the Top Floor, Jeff Kurt's educational podcast. There were a couple of more, I think a guy named John Arnold was doing more of a tutorial , and I think he was doing like video, I think he was doing audio as well. And there were a couple of people, but no one was really doing regular interviews.
At the time I was working as an editor at a photo magazine, so I was writing all the time about the technical. An I really didn’t wanted to do more of that on my own time.
Tom: Right.
Ibarionex: Because that was just like, it's 40 hours a week.
I'm already focused on that stuff. I really wanted to have a chance to sit down and talk with photographers about photography. And I would get to do that every once in a while at the magazine. Because we would do a profile on a photographer, so I'd get to interview them. But if I interviewed them for 45 minutes or an hour, you know, only a fraction of that would end up in the article. In terms of quotes, I would talk to them, have a conversation, do my research, and then I would write many, whatever word count I needed to write for the magazine. And so it wasn't an unfiltered, unedited conversation that found its way into the magazine. And there were a lot of things that, there were a lot of people who I wanted to talk to just didn't fit into the goals of the magazine.
There were photographers I knew, that more than likely they wouldn't get focused on, because the nature of magazines was really to get advertisers to help, you know, pay for the magazine and the staff. So there were always a lot of, you know, photographers who could, get people to pick up the magazine, but also were often tied to some product, right?
Tom: Yeah.
Ibarionex: As now and then, you know, that drives a lot of traffic. So it's nice that with the show, I could interview anyone who I was interested in having a conversation with, regardless of whether or not there would be a big draw or not. If I saw something about their career or their work or a book that I wanted to learn more about, then I could send them an email and say: Hey, I got a show. Let's talk.
More often than not, people have said yes. So it's been, you know, it's been a lovely part of my life both creatively and personally as a result.
Tom: It’s amazing it worked out this way.
Ibarionex, let's walk a bit back. What drew you to photography?
Ibarionex: Oh, I was a kid about 10 years old when I was a member of the Boys Club of Hollywood here in Los Angeles. And one of the counselors had fixed up a dark room that had not been used in a while and brought in two freelance photojournalists to come teach several kids how to shoot film, put film in a camera, learn the basics of exposure, processing, film, and making prints. And the first time print appeared on a blank sheet of white photo paper in the developing tray. That was it. That's all I wanted to do. And so at that point, I just started, anytime I would go to the club, I would grab a camera, load film in it and go out, shoot around the club or in the streets of Hollywood and just make pictures eager to go back to the dark room to make more prints.
So that was what I wanted to do. And yeah, I've been lucky that my whole life has revolved around photography since. Not because of any grand plan, but my way towards doing that.
I have loved making imagery, making pictures, and that's not that feeling of being able to make something out of nothing, from what I'm seeing. It's never left me.
Tom: When people tell me that they started out in a dark room, I started out also in a dark room in the attic of my parents home and I always ask them if you still smell the developer fluid.
Ibarionex: Oh yes
Tom: It's something in my brain that will never go out.
Ibarionex: Oh yeah! You know that smell. Yeah. That fixture also has a very distinct spell or the stop bath as well.
Tom: Yes.
Ibarionex: You know, I liked the meditative process of being in the dark room. Because you had to be very exact in terms of measuring the chemicals, the amount of time that the film was in the soup or in the developing, or the paper was in the developing tray. You know, all these very careful refinements. You had to be very, singularly minded when you were making film or making prints
Tom: Yes.
Ibarionex: You could have some music in the background, but you couldn't be distracted by a bunch of things. You couldn't have a browser window with a YouTube video playing or anything like that. You had to be like, really focused.
I miss that. Because digital is not that, you know, digital, you can have any measure of distractions available to you. That being said, a traditional dark room now is very expensive.
Tom: I just talked with Harvey Stein and I asked him
Ibarionex: Oh, Harvey. He's a great guy. Yeah.
Tom: Because he's 10 hours a day in the dark room and I asked what music you have on there? He says, normally not, but I might put on some reggae music channel.
You never know what people do to pass the time in there.
Ibarionex: Yeah. I like making prints. You know, at some point I'm gonna replace the inkjet printer that I lost in the fire. But I like making prints. I like holding the photograph at the end. I feel as good as they may look on a screen. There's something to be said about when you hold the photograph.
It feels like it's finished at that point. And, you know, I will always enjoy looking at a print, whether it's silver based or whether it comes out of a printer. Especially that nice white border around the image. It's always very, very satisfying.
Tom: Or in photo books, I was going to tell that you have a large collection, but of course now I guess they're all lost in the wildfire. Yeah.
Ibarionex: Yeah…that's, that's heart. That's kind of heartbreaking 'cause I had books there that I started collecting while I was in college. So, a lot of those books are just irreplaceable. You know, some have been personalized by photographers who are no longer with us and just, you know, other books are out of print or prohibitively expensive to replace.
I didn’t even looked to see how much some of those books that I would want to replace cost now. You know, I…I just can't go there. All those books are just turned into white ash.
When I walked on the property after the fire and I went to the area where my book collection was, I just saw these piles of just white ash and, you know…
I lost stuff there, but, you know, the photo equipment is easily replaceable, you know, the books not so much. Not so much because it was, you know, decades worth of collecting. Some books are easily replaceable. If I want to get Robert Franks “the Americans” or something like that, I can easily get a copy of it. Other books, not so much, not so much.
Tom: Such a shame Ibarionex.
Ibarionex: I had just spent a long time trying track tracking down to get a copy of a book, and finally getting it. And to have it just, you know, gone in ashes is kind of heartbreaking. People have offered to send me books and I'll probably start building up a collection again, but not right now. We're in a rental and I have to be kind of careful about how much I accumulate, especially with respect to books. I had a wall link bookshelf that I had just built a year and a half ago. Right. And it already filled it. I can accumulate books really, really quickly. So I'm gonna have to be careful in terms of how much I accumulate here, 'cause I could do a lot of damage in two years.
Tom: Ibarionex, you had different roles in your life. You're an educator, a writer, a journalist, a podcaster, a workshop leader. You think as a little boy, you always had this vision in mind, or you just wanted to be an astronaut like everybody else?
Ibarionex: No. No. I had no idea what I was gonna do. It wasn't until, you know, my early college career that I had any sense that I could do something that involved being, you know, taking pictures or writing. It was only after I joined the newspaper at Los Angeles City College community college here in Southern California that I had the sense of what the heck I was gonna do in my life. Even as a kid, I just wasn't, you know, I wasn't sure what I wanted or needed. I did some acting in high school. That was great fun. And for a while I entertained the idea, well, to become an actor, but, you know, soon after graduating high school, you realize it's a whole different, different game.
And I just was, I was not up for the ups and downs. You know, constantly putting yourself out there, that is required for being an actor. And I knew plenty of people who were working actors. And the more I got to see what their lives were like and what they faced, it was like, it didn't seem like it was a good fit for me. It was certainly fun, you know, but.
Tom: But I think you were the guy who was up for a challenge always,no?
Ibarionex: Yeah. Yeah, but not at not at that time. You know, my level of confidence back then was not what it is today, and I couldn’t have really dealt with the level of constantly putting myself out there and the inevitable rejections that come from being an actor. Because you get more, you get more rejections than you get jobs and it's even more difficult now. But photography and writing was very self-affirming. For me to go out there and make and make work, and that's not something I could say being an actor, right? I much preferred photography where it was just like a lens roll, of film and I go out there.
Tom: Street photography, I think has always been this major core of your work Ibarionex. What drew you to this genre Photography?
Ibarionex: Well, when I started to learn photography, that was the very first subject I gravitated to as a kid. I was in Hollywood, so I just grabbed the camera and walked around the street and see what I could find. So I didn't know what it was. I didn't know this thing was street photography. I just knew that the things that I was interested in were outside. So that's what I just started to make pictures of. And then slowly as it got better and better at it. It just seemed to be what was a good fit for me. I didn't grow up with the outdoors but I wanted to make pictures. And the most accessible subject I had was out in the street, whether it was just walking, know the streets of Hollywood or Venice or downtown Los Angeles. It was like, I just wanna make pictures.
And then as I started to discover photographers that were doing that at a level that I had never, never could have imagined, I realized that, oh, this is a thing. And I began to have a better understanding of how to make it more effective. I made photographs that were good, but I really had no sense of, oh wow, there's a real artistry and a real thoughtfulness behind making pictures on the street.
That's been my pursuit ever since. In terms of how do I do this better? Do I challenge myself? Do I make photographs that, you know, I couldn't have made just a couple of years before. I've made other kinds of photographs, but I think street photography has taught me how to be a better photographer, more so than any other type of photography I've ever done.
Tom: I was going to ask you about influences, but then I think to read you spent a summer with Gordon Parks?
Ibarionex: Well, no, I wish I had spent a summer with Gordon Parks! But I got to visit him when I was in college.
Tom: Ah, right.
Ibarionex: I had discovered his work in college and someone knew him and gave me his phone number and I was gonna go and spend the summer in New York.
So I called him and I was hoping to, you know, work with him or do something. But at that point he was, I forget how old he was. He's probably in seventies, early eighties, something like that. So he was not looking for an assistant. Neil Ray had an assistant and he wasn't actively working, in the way that he had been in the past. But he invited me over to his apartment. so we spent a couple hours just hanging out and talking, which was a remarkable experience. He was working on one of his multiple autobiographies. I think he wrote like four autobiographies, and I think it was the third one. He had galley proofs for it on his coffee table with a bunch of images for inclusion in that book. So I was sitting there and having read the ‘Choice of Weapons’, which was his first biography, having seen the learning tree heading, having you know learned so much about him, I was surrounded by things in his apartment. I kind of knew the stories behind, right? Oh, there's a picture of his son, there's his daughter, there's the piano where he composed his music.
I mean, it was kind of surreal to walk into someone's place who you've never met before in real life, yet you're walking in there and you know several of the things that are in his space. And he was very gracious. I met him a couple of times afterwards when he came out to Los Angeles.
Yeah, it was really an honor to have a chance to meet someone, as legendary as he was, and to find him to be very kind and generous. I wish I had had more time with him, but I'm grateful for what I had.
Tom: So you went out with him shooting?
Ibarionex: Oh no. Yeah, he was just there at his apartment and so I just visited him there while he was having breakfast. He was having boiled eggs, some coffee, if I remember correctly. Very simple.
Tom: It looks almost like a start of the podcast. You had done an interview there with him while he was having breakfast.
Ibarionex: Oh, wow. Yeah. I wish I had had the chance to sit down and have a conversation with him, and record it.
The crazy thing is I was so nervous that I forgot to ask him to take his photograph. You know? It was only after leaving, or like, I didn't ask to make his picture. So I had one in my office before of a friend who had made a picture of him, which was a really nice portrait. So I may have to reach out to him or somebody else who I know have photographed him and ask a print to replace it, in my working space. 'cause I liked having him present there in that way.
Tom: Now we talk about podcast Ibarionex. You think that by running your podcast so many years, it has say like, shaped your own creative vision a bit?
Ibarionex: Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the things I often say about the show and the reason is the fact that I want people to discover that there's not just one way of becoming a photographer. That there's just not this one path, which in my younger years, I always felt like, oh, you had to do these exact things in order to be able to, like say ,that you're a photographer. And because of the many people that I've photographed over the years, I've realized, oh no, there's not just one path. There's not just one way of becoming a photographer. There's no one straight path to having a career. It doesn't mean that you have to have a studio and you have to do commercial work or things like that.
There are people who are doing just that. And there are other people who have a quote unquote normal job who do photography on the side, but who nevertheless make beautiful work.
And I've, you know, I've interviewed everything from that to, you know, from people who are complete amateurs who have never published anything to people who've had careers lasting 40 or 50 years and everything in between. It just really encourages me to hear that and to have those conversations and to share 'em with an audience. But it has encouraged a whole lot of people to kind of define for themselves what their photographic life is gonna be. And, you know, some people who have gone out and have made professional careers, others who haven't, who derive great satisfaction from whatever choice they've made.
Over the many years I've talked to many people who've listened to the show, who've told me how much of an impact the show has had on their lives. And that it served as a great source of encouragement for their own path. You know, to become, photographers or whatever form it finally took. And those comments come, you know, it's not that I hear that all the time, but every once in a while I'll be with someone and they will tell me about the impact the show has been, which is not something I anticipated when I started making the show.
Some of the people who may have been greatly impacted from the show, I'll never know. I'll never hear from them, and that that's all well and good because the few people who I feel have told me that tells me that there's a lot more out there, which incentivizes me to just keep doing the show. That's a nice benefit to it.
But ultimately I do it just because I, I just like having the conversations. So even if I didn't have the audience that I have now, I'd still be doing it. And ultimately that's really kind of the goal of the show is that, that I want them to hear something and then go to a photographer and go, oh, I can do that. That’s it. I mean, for my audience, that's the goal, is that they'll hear something and that'll encourage them to go out there and do something with their own photography, whatever form that may take. That's part of what keeps me doing it, right? Because I know that that's what the show has kind of done for me. It encourages me, it inspires me, it educates me. And I know that if it's doing that for me, more than likely there's gonna be others who it's gonna do the same thing for it. And that's why I can't imagine not doing the show, because I'm always eager to grow and change as a photographer. And these conversations really helped me to be able to do that, helped me understand photography in a way that I wasn't able to before I did the show, even though I was writing about it. So yeah, as long as I have a voice and I can hear, I
Tom: You keep going.
Ibarionex: Yes. I keep doing the show until I'm just physically not able to do it anymore.
Tom: Ibarionex, you interviewed the greatest names in photography over all these years. Is there like a common theme that comes back when you think about conversations, what it, or what you need to do as a photographer to keep on going?
Ibarionex: That's a really good question. I think one of the things, that sort of is a through line for a lot of photographers who have been doing this for a very long time, is that they worked on projects a lot. Because I think that's where the photographer figures out what they want to say, you know, what they want to explore, what they wanna use their camera for. I think when you're using just a camera just to make individual photographs, that's just the starting point.
At some point the photographer has to figure out, okay, what do I wanna say with this stuff? I've learned all this, all this about about lighting, about exposure, learned how to make prints and know how to do Photoshop, all those other things and go, okay, now what, what are you gonna do with that?
It's kind of like, you know, buying a souped up race car and never taking it to the track. Right. That's what it's there for.
Tom: Yeah, right.
Ibarionex: You can tell me, oh yeah, this car has, you know, this, this engine and this exhaust and this manifold. You can talk to me all about it and I go, when was the last time you took it outta the race? And, oh, I've never raced it. You know, it's kinda like, well, it's kind of like, what it's there for, not just to stroke your ego.
But the photographers that I've talked to, like the photographer you mentioned before, Harold,
Tom: Harvey?
Ibarionex: Harvey. Harvey, excuse me. He's been photographing Coney Island for decades.
Tom: Yeah.
Ibarionex: That's his passion. Harvey has been shooting, you know, that location in New York with his Leica and a 28 millimeter and produced amazing, amazing work. And I think that really speaks to the longevity of his work. He's like, there was something that he wanted to photograph that he was deeply passionate about, he makes fantastic photographs as a result. Could he made a career photographing something else? Yeah, probably. But he has a love for that, know, for that, that part of the city. And it comes through in the photographs.
And think, you know, Douglas Kirkland, who was a celebrity photographer, but ultimately he loved photographing people. He loved the relationships that he had with people his photographs showed that and his whole life. I think everybody would need to aspire to be Douglas Kirkland because he was like a kid with a camera. Always was, you know, and anytime he would sit next to him and talk to him, he would just be so effusive, you know, so joyful about what he had the chance to do.
It's like, oh, I love that. Talked to Joel Meyerowitz. I've talked to him many times. And that energy, that love for what he does is there. And that's that, but each of those photographers has things that they're working on. They're not just taking pictures for picture's sake. I think if you really at some point when you hit a wall in terms of, you know, your photography, it's like, well, what's your project? What are you working on?
Inevitably every photographer has to come to a point where they have to make that decision. And when they don't make that decision, it’s when things become a bit stagnant, right?
Tom: True.
Ibarionex: Where you're making incremental improvements, but you're often left unsatisfied with what's happening with your work. You can make individual good photographs, But to what end? Right? You know, photography's about communicating, so you have to find a way, okay, what do you want to communicate and how do you want to communicate it? Do you want to put together a book? Do you want to have an exhibition? Do you want to have a magazine spread? If there are any magazines there that are left. But that's where I think that's kind of the end goal is like, what do you wanna do with this work?
It's not to say you can't just be a documentarian of your own family's life, right? You could just do that and that would be good enough and just as important as anything else. But you still have to have an idea of, oh, this is what I want to do, especially, getting it off the screen and putting in a print and putting in an album so your family can enjoy it after you're gone. You have to be thoughtful about that because once you're gone, if that stuff is on a hard drive, you know, no one's gonna go through it,
Tom: No. No one's going to see it.
Ibarionex: That’s why it's like, if you're doing it just for your family, that's why it's important to make the prints or put together a book or a zine or something. So there's something physical about all that stuff to carry things over. Otherwise it's like, what was the whole point? I think we all want our work to live beyond us.
Tom: Ibarionex, let's walk a bit to the other part of the podcast. Last January, both you and your wife, you lost your house and your studio and most physical things due to the Eaton wildfire.
Walk me through this day a bit. How it evolved and what happened.
Ibarionex: There had been some high winds up in the area where I live at Altadena and the Santa Ana winds that happen every year. So it was sort of a norm that we would experience these very high winds. More often than not, we would lose power sometimes for hours. The worst it was maybe three days that we had without power. So on this particular day, we again lost power. It was around 5 or 6:00 PM and so it was like, oh, okay, power's out. I'm just waiting until it comes back on. And so, I had loaded up my iPad with a book and it was all powered up. I was just reading and at some point around 9 or 9.30 and went to bed.
Power still wasn't on. And my wife and my sister-in-law, who was also living with us at the time, had already gone to bed. I just glanced at my phone and I saw some notification about a fire, which was the first time I had been aware of it at all. And I looked out the bedroom window and I could see the flames up on the mountain.
I saw my neighbor pulling his car out of the driveway as I went out to my deck. I wanted to get a sense of where the winds were blowing. And I could, as soon as I stepped down to the deck, I could feel the wind against my body and I could feel that it was coming from the direction where the fire was coming. So it was likely coming this way.
I went out and talked to my neighbor and he said he was evacuating. So I went back into the house and I told everybody we gotta leave. And they were like, they had, they were completely clueless about the fire. Because we hadn't got any notification or anything like that. So we kinda scrambled, grabbed, you know what we could because the power was out, we were relying on our phones as flashlights. So we grabbed some pictures, cremations, grabbed the dog, the dog food. You know, not, not, not much, not, we just got in the car and we left.
And we eventually ended up in a hotel, because by that time, countless other people had already evacuated. The fire started around 4PM, something like that. So the fire was,, you know, it was going at a good pace by the time we evacuated, but we had no idea the extent. So we went to a hotel, and then the next morning I thought I still would have a chance to get back to the house before the fire reached and maybe get a couple of things. But the fire alarm for the house had signaled that the sliding glass door had shattered or been broken into around 6.30 or 7AM. So by that time, it was too late.
You know, I hit a wall of smoke just several blocks away from my house and I couldn't see past the hood of the car. So I just had to turn around. Because even if I had to park my car in front of the house, I wouldn't have been able to see it.
And then several hours later. You know, I drove back up there with my wife and it was all gone.
At that point it was like, oh, it was, it was very very surreal. Even before we got to our house, we were driving through the area and we could, and this was before, you know, they had the National Guard or anything there to kind of restrict access in the immediate area of the fire. You know, we were driving through therr, still flames coming out of, you know, and it was just like all these things that were familiar to us, houses, stores, businesses they were just gone. It was really strange.
And so immediately after that it was just trying to figure out, oh, what do we do? What do we do next? Right? And so it was this huge sort of learning curve of trying to figure out, okay, how do you survive this? And we were in a hotel filled with people who were in the same boat as we were, you know, 'cause the great majority of the people staying in that hotel were people who were displaced because of the fire. They had lost their homes or their homes are still there, but because of the smoke and all that other stuff, they couldn't go back. So you had hundreds of people there, and we were just down the road from the convention center where they had the evacuation center. So we were constantly going there to sign up for, you know, various relief efforts, Fema, you know, and all organizations that were there. And sort of figuring out, okay, what do we do next? You know, getting in contact with insurance, applying for grants, to figure out, okay, where are we gonna live? Because a hotel was expensive, right? And there was terms of getting money from the insurance company and, you know, and stuff you really didn't have to think about before, right?
You never, ever consider, and all of a sudden you go, okay, how do I piece together a life after losing everything, at least losing all the physical things, the house and everything inside of it. And it was just…and doing that the while being heavily sleep deprived, which is, I don't recommend it. Those first, that first month was really, really rough. I lost about 10 pounds unintentionally just because my appetite was down. Clothes I had bought immediately afterwards. 'cause I only had the clothes that I was wearing when I left the house, I bought some clothes and a month later I couldn't fit into them anymore. I had to donate them because the pants were too big, the shirts were too big. And it was just like, I wasn't eating, I wasn't, it was just, I would eat maybe one or two meals a day, but they weren't of any significance. And all of a sudden these pants were like, I can't fit these things anymore. So I had to go out and buy other clothes.
But that was an, that was a big indication about how it was impacting me, physically, you know, just that my appetite was, I just wasn't really interested in eating. There were so many other things that were more important. At least it seemed that way at the time.
Tom: And mentally Ibarionex, because of course, not only this, but then you live together with your wife and your sister-in-law and the dogs, in all the same room suddenly for a while.
Ibarionex: Yeah, for the first week or so, a week or two, we lived together in a small hotel room. And then my wife and my sister-in-law created a GoFundMe page. So we got money that was really helpful while we waited for the insurance company. But it gave her the means, my sister-in-law, the means to get her own room. And 'cause that first week we were all in a really tiny room. Me, my wife, my sister-in-law, and two dogs, and that's stressful. That's stressful. But once she got her place, and then at some point we transitioned outta there to an Airbnb, and that was helpful, right? Because we just weren't within the confines of that small room, we had a little more space. It just felt like I could breathe a little better. And then we moved into this place about two, maybe two weeks, two or three weeks ago, which is a house we're renting. Luckily, we're gonna be renting for the next two years as we go through the process of rebuilding.
You know, the first month was really, really stressful. I've never been so fatigued in my entire life. I mean, people talk about fatigue, but then that's, I've I've said, oh, I'm tired. I have never been tired like this.
There was so much that had to be done and my mind was constantly running at a hundred. And I was returning to work within a very short period of time at Huntington. So I had that, and then I had to deal with the fire, and then I had other family issues I was contending with at the same time. So I had like multiple plates spinning.
Now things are a lot calmer. You know we still have to deal with a lot of stuff, it's not as frenetic a pace as it was in those first initial weeks of the fire.
Tom: So Ibarionex, when this happened, you took your digital files, and let all the rest, because I imagine this is not the first time it happens and you might think that you will come back. Is there something that you say I should have taken also, now thinking afterwards?
Ibarionex: Well, I always had always thought, well, if anything happens, I need to grab a hard drive with all my digital files on it. I backed them up to a cloud, all my files are backed up to the cloud, but I always knew: Grab the hard drive. So that was the only thing of value that I took from the house. I left all my camera equipment in a safe. I only had an XT3 that I just happened to be using for the last couple of days before the fire and a 30 millimeter lens I was borrowing from Fuji. So that was all that I'd left with.
I didn't think to go into the safe and grab all the photo equipment. You know, part of me was thinking, oh, we'll come back. It'll be fine. But I said, just in case, let's get that. In retrospect, what else I would've taken, there was a portrait of my dad that hung in the hallway I shot on film that I don't have otherwise. I think that's the only thing that I would've left with, that I didn't leave with. Yeah, everything else I. You know, when I think about the books, that was like a big loss. But it's like, could I have gotten started? Which book would I have taken if I had the chance? I didn't have the luxury of that kind of time. I hope it was there still, and now it’s not it's like, eh. When I start thinking about the books that were are on that shelf, I, oh God, yeah. I lost that one. Oh, I lost. And it's just, but I can't, I can't go there for too long because it just gets very depressing. But yeah. Yeah, most of the stuff that I wish I had taken had really, other than photograph of my dad. Yeah. I think that's the only other thing I would've probably, I wish I'd grabbed that.
But it just wasn't, it was a crazy 20 minutes. 20 or 30 minutes of scrambling outta the house. And so you're, you know, when you are using your phone as a flashlight, not everything is obvious.
Tom: I can only imagine. And your, your wife, Ibarionex, how you supported each other during all this time?
Ibarionex: It's been good. It's been good. I mean, we, as with any married couple, you know, you have your issues, but, it's made us stronger. You know, we've really been relying on each other in ways that we're always present, but, you know, have really have become, we've become even more resilient than we were before. And you know, it was hard for her because she had been sick since December with bronchitis and there were the fires. It turned into pneumonia. The first couple of months, she was really rough. It was rough with breathing. She had to go to urgent care three times for breathing treatments and certain things. Her voice isn't completely back. That was, that was really rough. But, you know, we're there for each other and now we're slowly back on our feet, figuring things out financially about where we stand, what we need to do. You know, we're good in terms of our relationship. I know other relationships would falter if not completely break up with a disaster like this.
We're really good with each other for which I'm grateful for. I couldn't imagine going through this and having to deal with marital issues on top of it.
Tom: So good to hear.
Ibarionex, the photography community you built over the years with the podcast, they came forward and they helped you out?
Ibarionex: Oh yeah, that was, that was incredibly heartwarming, unexpectedly gratifying. You know, when she started the GoFundMe, so many people who contributed to the GoFundMe were people who listened to the show. People, you know, donating a couple of bucks, people submitting hundreds of dollars to help us out and. It caught me by surprise, but it made me have an understanding about what I had built with the show and, you know, the community that I was part of. Those things helped us tremendously.
It all took a while just because of the size of the disaster. It took a while for us to get initial funds from the insurance company and we were like, how are we, are we gonna pay for all this stuff? You know?
Tom: Of course.
Ibarionex: And then when we moved into the house, she did a thing on like a house warming thing on Amazon where people can buy things you need. So all the stuff that's in this house now largely has been donated. You know, the towels, the bath mats, all those little things that you've accumulated, over decades, which all of a sudden you realize you need.
It's like, oh, we need a place to put the dish soap or the bath soap, all those, you know, all those things that you never really thought about. Oh, we need this and we need this, we need that. We're getting it 'cause people wanted to help. We put a list of all the things we were figuring out that we needed, you know, a basket, which just saved us the trouble of having to go out there and go to all these stores to get all this stuff.
They were just getting delivered to the house. The garage now is just a stack of cardboard Amazon boxes I need to get rid of. But that's a big champagne problem to have. I mean, to go from your whole, all your worldly possessions fitting into one suitcase to a whole house full of stuff, including a couch and a desk, this all happened in a couple of months,
And luckily we finally found this place, which is not too far from where I work and where home once stood. But once I was in this room it was immediately evident to me that it needed a lot in order to get to the point where I could do a podcast again. And we had talked about it because we initially we scheduled doing this talk some weeks ago, but I did a webinar when I just had the mic and the laptop and the echo in this room was just terrible. It was fine for the webinar, but I knew there was no way that I could do a show
So had different things to do, getting an area rug, getting these sort of sound panels, got a couch in the back, you know all of that stuff to help dampen the sound to the point where it's acceptable. It's not as good as what I had before, but it's good enough I think. I think we're good now. Fingers crossed.
Tom: I don't want to drag this out more Ibarionex, but the paperwork involved in this whole affair, I can imagine there are also heaps and heaps and heaps of paperwork to do.
Ibarionex: Yeah. So much. So much, yeah. Not so much now, but man, those first, in that first month or two, so many forms. You're filling out many forms, and you know, it was crazy, from the stuff with Fema, the Army Corps of Engineers who were going to clean up, all those things. Insurance. It was just endless all of a sudden. Forms that you were signing applying for grants, you know, for money to help with this and that, and, you know, 200 bucks here, 500 bucks there. I had to get another car because we left with one car and left one car behind, but it wasn't, due to the fire, to the extent you couldn't drive it, but it was smoke filled. And because of it, it would've been better if it had been burned in the fire because then it would've been a total loss. But the insurance company was not going to cover it as a total loss despite the smoke damage. And I was fighting with him for a month. It was like people, they're telling people don't go back into houses because of the toxicity. You know, there's asbestos, there's all the smoke in the air, and they're telling me, oh, just get the car detailed and I'll be fine. I’m like, I don't think so. After a month of fighting with the insurance company, I was just like, screw it. I just went to a dealer, the car dealership, what will you give me for the car? And we just got another one.
Tom: What's next for you Ibarionex, because I suppose when this happened, you were living day by day. You can look a bit more in the future now?
Ibarionex: Yeah. The next thing right now is to talk to architects and contractors about rebuilding.
Tom: Okay.
Ibarionex: That's now what we have to shop for, trying to figure out who we're gonna hire to do this for us. And then start going through that process of getting designs for the house, pulling permits, and then seeing when construction can actually start. From what I read, I think the county had just started issuing out permits for rebuilding the past week. So yeah, that's the 'cause no one really kind of knows how much everything is actually gonna cost.
Tom: I can imagine.
Ibarionex: You have thousands of people who are trying to build homes simultaneously. So how that's gonna impact us, I have no idea. We have an idea of how much money we have towards rebuilding, but now we gotta figure out is that gonna be enough?
Tom: Right.
Ibarionex: I'm hopeful that it is, but who knows? Which is why, you know, we're still asking for people to sort of support us financially, which I've always felt kind of awkward about, but at this point we kind of really need whatever help we can get, you know?
Tom: What you have running to help out Ibarionex, a GoFundMe page, what more? How can people help out?
Ibarionex: Yeah. There's a GoFundMe that's active. I'll send you the link for that so you can put it up, that's a good way to be able to sort of contribute. And, you know, if people don't want to use GoFundMe, they can have on my website, I have Patreon, I have buy-me-a-coffee.
Tom: Okay.
Ibarionex: You know, modest donations, they can do that, because all that stuff, you know, all that stuff helps. I mean, there was one person who's on a limited income and I think they sent me 10 bucks and I was so grateful to them because I know how hard it was for someone on a limited income to even send me 10 bucks. So I'm greatly appreciative. Anything and everything that people are able to do for us, you know, 'cause there are a lot of people simultaneously who are in the same boat who are asking for the very same help.
And thankfully I have a community and audience that has done more for us than I could have imagined. And I'm very grateful. But this is a long slog, right? It's gonna be two years. So, the help that people can have provided to us in the immediate aftermath of the fire has been a godsend. But I and other people who are in this boat are gonna need help for a good time to come.
Tom: I just hope, let's say in two years from now, that you're settled in your new house, I invite you to come here to Spain to visit mine. We'll have a coffee and we will do a podcast episode like this together. Maybe. That would be excellent.
Ibarionex: That would be good.
Tom: Let me round up this interview a bit Ibarionex with a bit more lighthearted questions.
I think you got a BA in English literature, right?
Ibarionex: Right.
Tom: What's a novel you always can keep coming back to.
Ibarionex: The one novel I always, I reread, I think I've reread more than any other novel is the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I don't know why I gravitate to that book, but every once in a while I'll go, and reread that again. I enjoy that book.
Junot Diaz, who's a Dominican American author, I always enjoy his books too. He has a book of short stories called Drown, which was one of the first books I ever read that reflected my Dominican geek-heritage which was remarkable. And he has another book called the Amazing Life of Oscar, or something along those lines. He won a big award several years back. But those, I think those two books are kind of like sort of my go-to.
There was one book that I read that I picked up a copy of recently, 'cause I hadn't read it in a while. And it was Juan Pedro Páramo, who is a Mexican writer if I remember correctly, who writes in the spirit of Magical Realism, which was a period of Latin American literature. That was very popular, I think during the fifties and sixties. But I remember reading this book, which was just made into a film I think Netflix or something like that. And I remember just reading that book and just going, wow. And I'm looking forward to rereading it because I haven't read the whole thing since college.
Yeah. But I'm hopeful that it will be just as impactful as then. Yeah, those are the books that immediately sort of come to mind.
Tom: You grew up in a Dominican household Ibarionex. Is there like some food or any dish that brings up childhood memories?
Ibarionex: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Bunch of them, like Maura, which is like rice and beans. Rice, maybe pinto beans. That's just, that's kind of like a staple. And, you know, sancocho, banana frita, yeah, all those foods, man. And it's hard, you know, there's no Dominican restaurants in Los Angeles, at least that I'm aware of. It's when I go to New York that I get my fill of Dominican food, which makes me very, very happy.
Tom: Who's the cook at home?
Ibarionex: Oh, we kind of go back and forth between me and her. As of now I haven't been cooking a whole lot. It's just like, it's just so tiring all and at the end of the day, you know. Unfortunately, I don't cook Dominican dishes. I never learned how to do that, so I just kind of will fry some salmon or bake some chicken broccoli. It's very simple and boring. It's nothing exotic or interesting, but, you know, eating out is quite expensive. So you kind of have to balance things out.
Tom: But you're already lost so much weight Ibarionex, it's not good to eat only broccoli now.
Ibarionex: No, no, no. Luckily they have a good cafeteria at work, so I can have a variety of stuff there at lunch, but usually by the time I get home I'm just been like nibbling. I think I'm also just getting older and I just can't eat as much as before.
Tom: Yeah, I know. What's the most funniest thing that ever happened to you while you were out shooting?
Ibarionex: Funniest. Oh, oh, I don't know if this is the funniest, but it's one of the weirdest things that happened. I was in downtown Los Angeles and I was photographing at Union Union Station, which is an old railroad in downtown Los Angeles, near Vera Street for people who are familiar with Los Angeles.
I just left Union Station and was crossing the street to Vera Street, and I saw this woman with this dog whose hair was like dyed, a little chihuahua sort of dog. It was just an unusual looking dog. And I asked this woman, Hey, do you mind if I make a photograph of your dog? Right? So I made a photograph of the dog.
And then a couple of days later, I heard that the dog had been kidnapped. And what had happened is that the actual owner of the dog had taken their dog to a place to get it a bath. And someone claimed the dog before the owner got back and took the dog. And then somehow that dog got in the hands of this homeless woman, which is who I met when I made the picture of the dog. By that time, you know, the story had happened, other people had seen the dog and they'd gotten it back to its owner. But I was going, wait, I'm going, Hey, I know that dog. I’ve got a picture of that dog. So I think that was very funny. Surreal. I probably had had other things that are kind of funny that have happened, but that's the one that immediately comes to mind.
Tom: I think on this note, on this more fun note, we can round up this interview Ibarionex, and I will let you go on with your Sunday morning there. Thanks a lot for being here with me tonight. It's been wonderful getting to know you.
I hope next year we can do a talk about something different, but just let me tell you again that I enjoy your podcast very, very much and please keep on doing them. Maybe for yourself also as a bit of a creative outlet to not to think about other things for a while.
Ibarionex: Yeah, that's the plan. And thank you for having me on your show. I really welcome the opportunity to talk to you and your audience, so thanks a lot.
Tom: My pleasure. Have a great day Ibarionex and we see each other around. Bye.
Ibarionex: Take care. Bye.
Outro:
And, that’s a wrap on our conversation with Ibarionex Perello for today. His passion for photography, storytelling, and teaching has impacted so many, and his strength in the face of loss is truly inspiring.
If his work has ever helped you in some way, this is a time when the community can return the favor. You can support Ibarionex in small but meaningful ways—whether by sharing this episode, buying one of his great books, or donate any amount to one of the links in our show notes.
To see more of his photography, visit ibarionex.net, and make sure to listen to The Candid Frame—it’s a truly inspiring photography podcast.
If you enjoyed this episode folks, as always, subscribe and leave a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts, and share it. Thanks for listening to The Camera Café Show, and we’ll see you next week for another talk with a wonderful photographer…adios!
