About Los Angeles

What really prompted this effort was a longstanding interest in photographing Los Angeles. The challenge, if I wanted to do it well, in a meaningful way, was to find something to say visually about L.A. A lot has been said, much of it restating what was said when the city really started to expand (I was tempted to say blossom) and be taken seriously in the 1950s. I sent the URL for this site to my uncle, who kindly observed that "Your camera eye sees little bits of beauty momentarily here and there in a broadly unbeautiful cityscape." It dawned on me that that was, in fact, what I'd been trying to capture when I started thinking about how L.A. might be rendered through my lenses.

I've never really been one to photograph people, and it dawns on me that Los Angeles suits that inclination quite well. There aren't that many people to get in the way of the cityscape. There is, indeed, something barren about the place. It has to do with the cars, the sprawl. Sure. It is, at its heart, a lonely, barren place. When I first moved here from the East, it felt as if I'd been dropped into Atlantic City in late September: the crowds were gone, the weather was good and the streets were empty. Endless fall.

The image up top is the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue, right against the big Korean church there, and was taken mid-morning on a recent weekend. If you open it up to a larger screen the shadows look like they spell Vanessa. This is one that would have worked well, I think, in film.

The other two were just shot today, in the middle of the day, as I drove to and from a performance at my son's school. The image on the left is Beverly Boulevard in the Larchmont area, the right was taken on Fairfax, heading south toward Beverly.