Heatwave Suite is a series of ten large scale silver gelatin photographs made from images taken while staying at the Beverly House in Los Angeles during the late summer of 2022. The grounds of the mansion once owned by William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies is where John and Jackie Kennedy stayed during their honeymoon. The site is also heavily featured in scenes from “The Godfather” (1972) and has since become a consistent filming location in Beverly Hills associated with displaying excessive wealth.

The photographic explorations in Heatwave Suite are guided by the mythologies generated on the historic property between Laura Tinard and Peter Tomka. Together they found a convivial encouragement in uncovering cinematic narratives relative to their dialogue around the Beverly House. After meeting, their love at first sight, for each other, and for the setting, provided a constant modification of the fictions they discovered. During all hours they explored the expansiveness of the villa, merging their invented mythologies with those they encountered in coincidence. Their scenes result in a suite of photographs made during a heatwave.

The allusion to cinema is not only in the subject matter but also in the way the photographic prints are made. This is a process specific to Tomka’s work, where a  projector functions as the enlarger and exposes a piece of light sensitive paper to a digital negative. The subject matter of Heatwave Suite puts the pool at the center, cross referencing the chemical process of analogue photography with staged scenes from films that take place in bodies of water.