Analog Life

ANTHONY WILSON is a guitarist and composer and a native Angeleno, who has always dug deep into his creative reserves to ask big questions and explore new territory.  I’m deeply impressed by his fluidity and openness to the blind curves of creativity.

Anthony Wilson taking CicLAvia Break at Union Station 

 

For his new work, Songs and Photographs, Wilson created an “album” in the purest sense: A collection of musical compositions and photographs meant to be taken as a whole and that travel across space and through moods.

I reviewed the collection for KPCC’s The Frame. As well, you can read the text, which went up on here on LAist this week.

Wilson will be performing this Monday evening. For more information and reservations, click here.

Enjoy.

 

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The Story in a Snapshot

A LITTLE over a week ago, I received word that a collaborator, confidant and friend Carolyn Kozo Cole had passed away. Carolyn was the head of the Los Angeles Public Library’s photo collection for nearly 20 years and through her creativity, focus and imagination she was able to help us all see Los Angeles in a more complete and inclusive way.

from LAPL’S Shades of L.A. Collection

I met Carolyn in the early 90s when I arrived at one of the branch libraries in South Los Angeles  do a story for L.A. Style magazine on the then-nascent photo collection project, “Shades of L.A.”  “Shades” was Carolyn’s brainchild: Her plan set-in-motion was to collect snapshots from diverse family albums from across the Southland to fill in the library’s holdings. This she knew would mean an active search for images that would tell us a deeper and more complex story about the region — photos beyond ribbon cuttings, and landmark buildings and new parkways.

The photo below, of a garden wedding in Watts has stayed with me for decades now. It is from the book, Shades of L.A. a brief compendium that samples some of the project’s key finds. This photo is meaningful because in certain ways it was the very absence of quotidian images like this that sent Carolyn on her journey.  “What did Watts look like before the uprisings of 1965? The houses, the streets, the businesses?” “How and where did people celebrate milestone moments in their lives?” she wondered.  The library didn’t have anything beyond a photo of the old railroad depot. Surely there was more.  Those, she realized, would be part of family collections. They would be the photographs that chronicled the everyday.

I wrote an appreciation about Carolyn that will appear in  Sunday’s Los Angeles Times  you can read it here online.

I miss her emailed anecdotes and her phone calls and her little stack of special finds just for me. But every time I happen upon a photo like the one above from the online Shades archive, I know that she has truly given us so much that we will be using to understand Los Angeles and tell better stories about it for generations to come.

After/Image is Here

It’s here…My new book, ”After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame,” on Angel City Press, is making its way out into the world. It’s a collection of essays and photographs examining sense-of-place and the ever-evolving identity of the City of Angels.

I’ll be doing readings next month at Skylight Books (3/18), Eso Won Bookstore (3/19) and Vroman’s Bookstore (3/22). I will also be at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books April 21 & 22. Please stay tuned for details.

And if you are away from L.A., here’ where you can purchase directly from Angel City Press.

Weekend Walks Along Wilshire Boulevard

A DEEPLY involving and bittersweet presentation at #LAPL’s Central Library on Saturday afternoon. Annie Laskey and her mother Marlene hatched a plan to walk the stretch of Wilshire Boulevard from its downtown high-rises and mid-town department stores to the edges of the sea. Annie mentioned that the thrill at first was less about the walk and more about getting to operate the Minolta SLR. Annie shot and Marlene made note (see the notebook in the grid below). While Marlene and many of the iconic locations that the Laskeys recorded are no longer with us, the absences were filled with vivid stories. Grateful for the Laskeys and their. sticktoitiveness Hundreds of sites have now been preserved on Kodachrome slides. The Wilshire Boulevard — the Carnation Building, Mutual of Omaha, Ambassador Hotel– that still exists in my head flickered to life with her stories. You can glimpse 100 of those images in a new book, “The Wilshire Slides 1978–1979” put out through LAPL’s Photo Collection and Photo Friends the nonprofit organization formed to support & promote the collection.

Show & Tell

The new Summer issue of Boom has arrived. I have a short reflection in  it — and photos — about when as a writer words don’t go far enough &  what images  say in their stead.

documents

HERE ARE a few shots from last night’s talk for LA Pix, Still. Elon Shoenholz and Alan Nakagawa presented their work to a full house. Thanks to everyone who participated along the way. Your support and presence meant a lot. The show is up through the weekend at Document.

(and yes, my coat matches the matcha)

Phil Stern, 95

Phil Stern via Phil Stern Archives

WHEN I think back, there have been so many conversations with so many vivid subjects over the last couple of decades, but I will always have a special place in my memory for my talks with photographer Phil Stern.

Stern, who died last Saturday evening,  had been shooting since the 1930s and had been pretty much any and everywhere you could imagine.  And though many might think of his specialty as rarefied worlds of Hollywood and Jazz — he could and would settle into anything with a singular POV and sense of authority. His war photography and quiet interludes and candid moments of everyday life had equal power and resonance.

Edith Irby Jones standing alone in the hallway of the University of Arkansas Medical School

I was honored to be able to sit and listen to his globetrotting stories and even more so, to be able to be one of the people to tell a little bit of it.  For some years afterward he remained in touch via letters, emails and the occasional phone call in which he always greeted me as “George.”

Here is a snip from my 2003 story during an all-day visit to his home in Hollywood:

Stern winds through his sunny living room-cum-studio. Aside from the cutouts, there’s not one photo framed on the wall. There are piles of Stern’s old LP covers stacked in boxes, some prints in matte-boards piled on a side table. Above the kitchen’s breakfast nook, a black-and-white collage of celebrity mugs spells out “Name Dropper”; a tiny cutout of Frank Sinatra, arms outstretched, pasted on a wooden crucifix, crowns the refrigerator: “That,” he says, with a dismissive wave of the hand, “was Frank’s idea.”

He wasn’t just everywhere, he allowed us to ride alongside, to be everywhere as well.

My thoughts and heart are with his family.

The rest of my feature is here.

And of course some of my all-time favorite Phil Stern images:

Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie — photo by Phil Stern

Stan Getz – photo by Phil Stern

Documenting Los Angeles

Elon, Camilo and will be at Doc-U-Ment presenting work about Los Angeles. A score, written for each grouping of images, was composed by project curator Alan Nakagawa. Swing by,  bring your smartphone &  earbuds so that you can fully inhabit each environment. 

From Viewfinder to Frame

IT’S BEEN quite a kick (and scene-change) getting ready for the L.A. Pix, Still show that’s opening this weekend.
Just a few visual notes from prep last week. Finalizing images, purchasing and prepping prints and images.

The show is at the artist-run space, Doc-u-ment Coffee & Tea at 3850 Wilshire Blvd #107; It opens Dec. 7, 6-8pm — Koreatown.

Thanks, Elon and Alan, for all of the assist in helping jet-lagged, wandering-reporter me get this all together in no time.

Remembering Shades of L.A. — Now a Mini-Documentary

A FEW months back my piece on Shades of L.A., Los Angeles Public Library’s photo project, documenting L.A’s. diverse ethnic communities, was up for a vote. It won. The prize however goes to all of Los Angeles. A mini-doc retelling the history and the process behind the project is now up at KCET Artbound.

You can click here to watch.

Thanks everyone who took out the time to vote.