Images by Brennen Cunningham,
Brendan George Ko, Wendy Laurel,
Michelle Mishina, and Josiah Patterson
Text by Eunica Escalante
When wildfires ravaged West Maui in late summer of 2023, they would go on to be the deadliest in recent American history. From the ashes arose a longing to remember—to commemorate those lost, to recall the stories of places once brimming with life, to honor a vibrant history forever marked by tragedy. Some sites now exist only in memory: famed Front Street with its vestiges of Lahaina’s past as the royal capital of Hawai‘i; the island’s oldest Christian church, claimed along with three Japanese Buddhist temples. In these snapshots from before and after the blaze, local photographers capture what remains: the soul of West Maui, a community united in spirit and a land with a boundless capacity to heal.
