Cityscape: Which One is Real?

FOR many the notion, "streetlife in L.A." is an oxymoron.  Transplants comment often about how the sidewalks roll up so early here, or how we Angelenos will drive around the block to visit a friend, when really we could simply walk, or take six separate cars to one party when we could simply carpool in one.

Last week, we saw "D-Fens" trudging across a strange map of Los Angeles which in many ways  bent both the city's geography and its story. As well, the narrative fed the prevailing lore that "nobody walks in L.A." Indeed, the idea of a lone man walking the corpus of the city was evidence alone that he was mad,  or so thought the scrambled band of police officers tailing him.

Invented street life is another piece of L.A.'s odd story  We have  a lot of destination walks scattered around the Southland -- Third Street Promenade, City Walk, Americana and most recently L.A. Live As one of our guests, David Ulin, pointed out about the Grove, in the Fairfax District: "It's so strange that a place that people go to walk has a wall up against the real street, blocking its view of it."

All of it begging the question: "Why?"

I snapped these photos a few nights back at different ends of the city as I made my way from event to event and ultimately home. One is a "real" street and one is not. But even the "real" street doesn't look real. And I suppose that too is part of L.A.'s story.



photos: L.G.

LA Day/LA Night

AS YOU might imagine, there are numerous pictorial books about Los Angeles, each striving to in some way to fix L.A. within the borders of the frame. One of the newer photo studies, LA Day/LA Night is an aeriel examination of Los Angeles in diptych. Photographer Michael Light takes on Los Angeles infamous bright, astringent light in an attempt to look at the city as if through an unblinking stare. He juxtaposes that "telling" with images that are shot after the sun has disappeared from the sky and thus exposes Los Angeles' other face, that shimmering sparkling blanket of light.

From the book description:

The greater Los Angeles area covers 4,850 square miles—the size of a small country—and holds almost 18 million people. Perhaps America's most massive human creation, it has been legendarily vilified and celebrated in equal measure since its inception. Is Los Angeles the face of the apocalypse, or an ultimate paradise at continent's edge—or both? With LA Day / LA Night, Radius Books continues photographer Michael Light's ongoing aerial examination of the arid American West by bringing together two opposing views of the city in a double volume set.

LA Day stares directly into the sun, washing the metropolis in blasted, relentlessly specific light. LA Night drifts over it in an ever-darkening electric dream, until the vast city below reverses and begins to signify the starry night sky vaulted above. Referencing Ed Ruscha, Peter Alexander, Julius Schulman, and writers from Philip K. Dick to Raymond Chandler, LA Day / LA Night continues Los Angeles' rich cultural legacy of examining its favorite schizophrenic subject—itself.

Note the Raymond Chandler and Julius Schulman references (Schulman shot the Case Study House photo some of you received in your envelope).


Also, the introduction was written by our recent guest, David L. Ulin.




-- L.G.

(photo: from the book la day/la night)