OUR guest this Wednesday night will be Kevin McCollister -- the eye and imagination behind the website, blog and book -- East of West L.A. I first encountered McCollister's work via a friend who thought there was "something about it" that I would connect with. McCollister was photographing Los Angeles, but a Los Angeles that looked, my friend said, "out of time."
-- L.G.
When I sat down to take a deeper look, paging though the images on his blog, I saw what he meant. The L.A. that McCollister was photographing in a meticulous way -- on foot, every weekend, day and night -- was one that felt not simply unique but personal. Not personal to him -- but to the viewer as well.
Much of it is visual poetry.
I'm writing about McCollister and his blog, East of West L.A., for a new magazine called, Boom, published by UC Press. I spent a couple of weekends wandering around downtown Los Angeles with him so that I could get a sense of how he works. I was less interested in the mechanics -- shutter speeds, aperture, ISO -- more interested in how he related to the city as a subject, and how he interacted with the people who inhabit this place.
Many of the themes we have been exploring in this course -- migration, immigration, erasure, vanished L.A., -- shimmer up in McCollister's images of street musicians, drifters, abandoned lifeguard towers, emptied-out storefronts, rainy terra cotta walkways on Olvera Street. What he sees isn't the postcard or tourist book version of L.A. but something else -- something quiet or overlooked.
Much of it is visual poetry.
I'm writing about McCollister and his blog, East of West L.A., for a new magazine called, Boom, published by UC Press. I spent a couple of weekends wandering around downtown Los Angeles with him so that I could get a sense of how he works. I was less interested in the mechanics -- shutter speeds, aperture, ISO -- more interested in how he related to the city as a subject, and how he interacted with the people who inhabit this place.
Many of the themes we have been exploring in this course -- migration, immigration, erasure, vanished L.A., -- shimmer up in McCollister's images of street musicians, drifters, abandoned lifeguard towers, emptied-out storefronts, rainy terra cotta walkways on Olvera Street. What he sees isn't the postcard or tourist book version of L.A. but something else -- something quiet or overlooked.
Here's an image from the second day we spent threading around Chinatown. Not what you would expect:
McCollister takes us deep into the city's psyche; he reveals the minute working parts: the train yards, the farmacias, the bus stops, the hints of things raveling at the edges. There's beauty in all of that hard work and survival.
Take a look at his website and the blog and come to class with one question for McCollister about his work, about his life, about Los Angeles.
-- L.G.
photos: Union Station and Sunset (Chinatown), by Kevin McCollister from his website East of West L.A. (used with his permission)
So excited for this speaker! It's interesting to look at the very first blog entries - so simple and (almost) boring, but they're not at all. Short, sweet and to the point -- shows how you can start somewhere and with time and a bit of technique you can really transform. I love that its archived to see that evolution. It's inspiring actually. In comparing the first and last images you see how he's found a very specific "voice" in his art.
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