Metropolitan Images

Branded

2010-07-22T10:46:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles's industrial district, just south of Union Station, has long been a site for street art--especially for protest posters and stickers. You have to have a sharp eye, though. Images expressing frustation and alienation cluster only in a few places in the district. Artists return to these places over and over. Warehouse owners respond by painting over their work.

"Branded" is a composite image. Posters have been plastered across what appears to have been a commercial ad. Their juxtaposition creates new, layered messages.

Port Shadows

2010-06-21T13:23:00.000-07:00

Since December of 2009, I've been working on a series of documentary images in Wilmington, California, which, along with San Pedro, is host to the the gigantic Port of Los Angeles.

The project's title, Port Shadows, refers to the fact the port's activity dominates every facet of life in this small, low income, largely-Latino community.

I hope you enjoy Port Shadows. I have enjoyed photographing life in Wilmington . It is a community that has gone through tough times. Now its air, fouled by port-related trucks, trains, and refineries, is being cleaned up. Wilmington still is no environmental heaven. Its residents still experience high levels of cancer and asthma. But there are realistic grounds for hope that a new, green era is being born.

Urban Security

2009-12-12T19:43:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of a faux 50s fast food establishment that had to be closed down--a victim of the current recession. The security travel trailer is there because the building is being used as a filming location by Hollywood movie studios.

In my mind, this image functions as an urban metaphor. Twentieth century modernity has lost its power over us. Indeed, the industrial city that bred the modernist vision no longer inspires. We know that a different kind of city is taking shape, but--at present--we don't fully understand what this new shape will be. In our twenty-first century limbo, we look for secutity. Security has become an over-riding value. We want security travel trailers like this one to be parked next to our homes and in our neighborhoods

Graffiti Alley

2009-11-02T10:24:00.001-08:00

The Los Angeles Industrial District is experiencing a big transition. To the north, condominium buildings are crowding into areas that once were identified as dangerous. Industrial warehouse and factory owners are resisting gentrification. They don't want to be forced out.

I was spending a morning in the Industrial District when I discovered this alley. It was full of graffiti, oil puddles, and danger signals. Who left this car untended in the alley? Would the owner ever return?

Gentrification had not yet reached Graffiti Alley.

Florence and Normandie

2009-10-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

I've just posted images from the second phase of my Metro Intersections project, which explores what life is like around some of LA's major intersections.

Florence and Normandie is the intersection where the 1992 Los Angeles uprising began--a chaotic response to the police beating of Rodney King. Horrible images of the riot's beginnings were captured by news helicopters, and, to this very day, these images come to mind when people pass by the Florence off ramp on the nearby Harbor Freeway. They are part of LA's collective memory.

But Florence and Normandie is also the hub of a functioning community--a community that is experiencing tensions associated with poverty and demographic change.

I hope you'll look at these Florence and Normandy images.

The Bingo Club

2009-08-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

The Bingo Club is located on Norwalk Boulevard in Hawaiian Gardens, a largely Latino community on the southeast border of Los Angeles County.

Like a lot of other institutions in the metropolitan area, the Bingo Club generates controversy. There are accusations that profits wend their way across oceans to support the "extreme" political positions of the club's owner. These accusations raise an issue that is regularly faced by urban photographers: How do you portray the worldwide money web in which many institutions that stand on modest corners in modest urban neighborhoods participate?

You have to depend on words to tell the story of international connectedness. But then, photographical images tell the story in a different and complementary way. I was moved, for example, by this picture of the Bingo Club. It reeks of the ordinary. There is little that is visually compelling, other than the palm trees whose fronds are still trussed together in a comical way. But wait! Profits from this club (allegedly) are fanning fires in a major international conflict. The image speaks loudly about the fact that actors in international stories, in their own local contexts, do not advertise their roles.

Return to Zapata

2009-07-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

I returned to an alley that is close to Mateo Street in the Los Angeles industrial district. I wanted to take a picture of a street painting of Emilio Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary hero. I also wanted to reconnect with a homeless man who lived in the alley. I can't say I knew him well, but we had enjoyed a brief conversation not long before.

The juxtaposition of the alley's homeless population and the radical Zapata mural had been haunting. LA's homelessness problem is, by any measure, shameful.

When I arrived in the alley, everything had changed. That often happens in the industrial district. The homeless population had moved on. And the picture of Zapata was not what I remembered. For the first time, I noticed that it had been painted over an alley door. The door was open. Behind it was a dark hallway that led to God-knows-where.

Reflections on a Traffic Sign

2009-07-03T12:11:00.001-07:00

One evening, when I began to think it was time to get out of the industrial district, I found this enigmatic example of street art. A row of protest stickers had been stretched across a directional traffic sign.

I was reminded of San Francisco artist Miranda Richardson's observation that protest art these days tends not to be as explicitly political as it once was. It's not as policy-based, she observed, mainly because "there isn't an overt movement."

The protest art on the traffic sign seemed to confirm Richardson's observation. It struck me as being a very good example of street-based conceptual art. What was the scantily-clad woman doing? Was she eating a hot dog? Or a dynamite stick? Why was there a trade mark in the upper right of the sticker? Why had the stickers been applied to a traffic sign and not to a wall?