The "LA Look" is an expression that appeared
in the early 1960s referring to a set of
attitudes and trends that characterise the city.
The "look" of Los Angeles is a mix of kitsch
and elegance; bright sunshine and film-noir
charm; surfers, art, car culture and deserts
as far as the eye can see.
This immensely pregnant expression
highlights the multifaceted nature of Los
Angeles, a city where image reigns supreme.
The photographic work presented in this
series begins with an analysis of the city's
myriad scenarios, where reality and fiction,
clichés and novelty coexist: Los Angeles
is both itself and its opposite. The icons
and symbols of Los Angeles, from its palm
trees to its endless freeways, are a constant
presence for those attempting to describe
the city. This project positions itself in the
space between LA's reality and our collective
imagination of it. Photographing tracts of
"urban nature", for example, offers a chance
to portray a kind of nature that fragments
the city's rigid structure, or, in the words of
anthropologist and urban theorist Mike Davis,
that creates "a strange choreography of the
wild and the urban". Southern California's
favourable climate allows plants to grow
virtually anywhere. Palm trees sprout up
from drainage ditches, or from cracks in the
concrete where a little water can collect.
Aspects are found alongside their opposites.
Nature tamed and nature unbridled.
The lush greenery of the Botanical Gardens
presents a complete change of scenery,
where different worlds coexist in the same
place, making us forget that Los Angeles grew
out of the desert.
According to David James, artists who take
on Los Angeles do so as if they were film
directors. They transform images of the city
into a narrative that inevitably has to reckon
with its essence and its mythology, with
cinema and an architecture made up of empty
spaces, and, of course, with fiction. Similarly,
these images have to deal with the city's
multiple dimensions, keeping in mind that
there are always two ways to photograph
Los Angeles: one way, and its opposite.
Alessandra Prandin, Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi
LA Look—
Highlighting the multifaceted nature of a city where image reigns supreme, Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi's series presents LA as both itself and its opposite. A photo-essay from Los Angeles
Network
Top: January 2010,
Wilshire Blvd,
Los Angeles, CA, US. The 26-km-long Wilshire
Blvd is one of the city’s main
arteries. Beginning at the beach
in Santa Monica, it crosses
the city on its way Downtown,
passing through such contrasting neighbourhoods as
Koreatown and Beverly Hills.
The boulevard is a principle
axis in LA, dividing the roads
crossing over it into north
and south. Above: December 2009,
South La Cienega Blvd,
Inglewood, CA, US. A few miles from the airport
(LAX), driving towards the city,
one encounters a vast area
alternating between oil wells
and residential areas. The
Inglewood Oil Field occupies
almost a 1,000 acres, making
it one of the largest urban oil
fields in the United States.
Today, the area is the focus of
many landscaping improvement
projects
Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi was born in Washington, D.C. He studied visual arts in Milan and Venice (IUAV). In 2009 he completed his doctorate with a photographic project titled Aesthetics of Survival. His work has been included in many exhibitions and has received numerous awards.
March 2010,
Santa Ana Fwy, Route 101,
Downtown Los Angeles, CA, US. Route 101, also known as
“El Camino Real” and, in the
distance, Rafael Moneo’s
Cathedral of Our Lady of the
Angels. In the foreground, huge
specimens of Ficus microcarpa, an Asian species that was
introduced to Los Angeles
in the 1950s and currently
represents 9% of the trees
lining the city’s streets
February 2010,
Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden,
UCLA, Westwood, CA, US. The Mildred E. Mathias
Botanical Garden is part of the
campus of the University
of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA), and was created with
the intention of supporting students’ field research in
botany. Situated in the town
of Westwood, the garden
has over 3,500 species of
plants from euphorbs and
cacti to subtropical and native
Californian species
March 2010,
Los Angeles River,
Glendale, CA, US. The Los Angeles River was
the primary source of water
for the natives of the basin. The
river’s unpredictably torrential
character, along with the flood
of 1938, led to the decision to
line its banks and bed almost
entirely with concrete to create
a flood control channel
December 2009,
North Fairfax Ave,
West Hollywood, CA, US. According to estimates by
the Los Angeles Times, the city is
leading the US in terms of the
number of vacant lots. These
scraps of land only come to
life as the holidays approach, becoming open markets for
pumpkins at Halloween or
Christmas trees in December
December 2009,
North Fairfax Ave,
West Hollywood, CA, US
February 2010,
Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden,
UCLA, Westwood, CA, US
Network
Los Angeles, USA
From Freewayland to the Garage—
Space International's renovation of Rudolph Schindler's Mackey Apartments is both pragmatic and sublime. Choosing to honor the existing architecture through contrast, the studio designed a cantilevered, 75-square metre counterpoint to the original building. An architecture report from Los Angeles by Mimi Zeiger
Photo-essays