The Last Resort
In 2022, Arifin Graham created a portfolio of black & white photographs of the people and places of Lahaina and Maui. With the destruction of Lahaina by fire in 2023, the images offer a glimpse of a rich, complex community, and a reminder of what we’re at risk of losing in the time of climate change.
Exhibit Dates: Friday, March 8 to Sunday, March 17, 2024
Exhibit Opening: Friday March 8, 6-8pm - Artist Talk at 6:30pm
Gallery hours:
March 9-10, Sat-Sun, 12-4pm
March 15-17, Fri-Sat-Sun, 12-4pm
“We must learn to become conservationists of memory. Otherwise, the damage we have done to our planet will cost us our past, as it may have already cost us our future.”
—Omar El Akkad, The World As We Knew It: Dispatches From a Changing Climate, 2022
“You can leave it all behind, sail to Lahaina … They call it paradise, I don’t know why, you call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye.”
—Glenn Frey & Don Henley, Eagles, “The Last Resort”, Hotel California, 1976
On Earth Day 2022, on the road to Mala Wharf in Lahaina, the first three images came quickly, within minutes: an unhoused woman sitting by a public washroom; a man showering outdoors; two heavily tattooed entrepreneurs making a sign for their flea market the next day. It came as an epiphany—by one definition, “an experience of sudden and striking revelation.” Arifin Graham knew immediately that these photographs should be in black & white, and that the title of the portfolio would be “The Last Resort.” So began a photographic journey of a place that he had come to know and love during many visits over three decades.
On August 8, 2023, most of Lahaina burned and, like so many others, Arifin continues to be deeply saddened by that event. So much was lost: 101 lives, places of magic and enjoyment for locals and travellers from around the world, thriving businesses, historic neighbourhoods and homes where countless generations had grown up and raised their families.
The destruction of Lahaina immediately gave the 2022 photographs a new historical context. What are the lessons from the losses of Lytton and Lahaina, and are we willing to learn them? What price are we willing to pay for our way of life? As the bumper sticker says, “There Is No Planet B”. This portfolio is a simple reminder, reflected in the faces and places of Lahaina and Maui, of what is now at stake.