Requiem: The Remains of the Day – Photographs by Ruth Morgan

Fig Garden Gallery

February 7 - June 28, 2026
Curated by Sarah Vargas

On August 4, 2021 at approximately 7:30 p.m., the Dixie Fire had already ravaged the ancient Lassen National Forest landscape and would soon crest the Sierra Nevada mountain range and roar through the small town of Greenville, California. In less than 45 minutes, the Dixie Fire destroyed wooden buildings that had stood for over a century. A gas station, a church, a hotel, a museum, and a bar were among the structures gutted, along with nearly 100 family homes, schools, and commercial businesses. Although the homes and property of approximately 1,000 residents were quickly reduced to smoking rubble, all of the residents were able to evacuate. The Dixie Fire began on July 13, 2021 and burned nearly one million acres before being contained on October 25, 2021, making it the single largest wildfire in recorded California history. 

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity. Global warming will increase the chance of catastrophic wildfires and heat waves. Since 2006, there has been a 27-fold increase in the number of Americans exposed to an extreme smoke day, principally in the western United States where hot, dry conditions, supercharged by climate change, have fueled these extreme wildfires. The driver is the fossil fuel emissions that have heated up Earth’s atmosphere raising the risk of extreme weather events.

This exhibition is comprised of 12 photographs taken in the aftermath of the fire by photographer Ruth Morgan when she traveled to Greenville in November of 2021. Requiem: The Remains of the Day documents the magnitude of the impact of one of these extreme weather events on this once-pristine Sierra town. It is a warning and a challenge foreshadowing the devastating impact of climate change left unheeded

 

All images: © Ruth Morgan, Requiem #1, 2021, Color photo printed on canvas, 40” x 60", Courtesy of the Artist | © Ruth Morgan, Requiem #5, 2021, Color photo printed on canvas, 40” x 60", Courtesy of the Artist | © Ruth Morgan, Requiem #10, 2021, Color photo printed on canvas, 40” x 60", Courtesy of the Artist | © Ruth Morgan, Requiem #15, 2021, Color photo printed on canvas, 40” x 60", Courtesy of the Artist