"When my flat was gutted by fire, fortunately no one was hurt. Returning home I was confronted with the devastation, but in the transformation there was a strange beauty. Almost my first thought was to capture it, for this beauty was even more evanescent than the world the fire had destroyed."

"It is now more than four months after the fire and though much was lost, I feel that, all in all, it was a cleansing. The loss of what is, after all, only 'stuff' has actually turned out to be the removal of a burden."

ricardo pinto - november 2003