Southeast of West L.A.

I was really excited when I saw this while walking in Hollywood. Just the night before I had seen it for the first time in class among Kevin McCollister's photo's. It was difficult for me to picture him walking around L.A. taking pictures of random things until I was walking around L.A. the very next day taking pictures of random things.

--J.Garcia

Kevin's Theory: Raw or Cooked?

OR

TONIGHT'S class, for those of you not in attendance, brought a guest visitor: Kevin McCollister. His images brought a mixture of emotions. The variety of portraits and other scenes from the city only reasserted what I found to be his most compelling words: LA seems to be one of two things, “raw or cooked.” Before he even began to explain, images began forming in my mind. Raw = no effort, no makeup, no money, no designer handbags, no designer jeans. Cooked = Hollywood, video cameras, editing equipment, touch-ups. There is certainly a divide in people’s interests here, yet why are there not more magazines with all of these “raw” images if so many people seem to be interested in it, like I feel (at least I think I feel) so many of us were with Kevin’s images this evening? Why do we still feel the urge to buy a Glamour magazine rather than one located perhaps on the bottom shelf of a newsstand, one that would most certainly project these untouched images that would send us “ooohing” and “aahing” instead of photo shopped pictures of Olivia Wilde throughout the pages of Cosmopolitan.

Los Angeles, as we have studied, is divided in more ways than one. This metaphor for the division: raw vs. cooked is particularly intriguing to me. We always say, “natural is better” yet do we really mean that? Do we act on that instinct? It seems hard to hear in this city, the City of Lights, like we just read about. This city that is one giant movie set. How will we ever fit in if we are not cooked? I too, am unsure of this contest, this pressing question. Some of you might be more resolute, more stuck in your raw ways. But, I am hoping, there are others who are confused by this as well. Who would have thought we would be asked to compare the City of Angels using kitchen vocabulary? Today, we see people whose Facebook pages boast more than 2,000 pictures of themselves. Would you say those are raw or cooked? Are your pictures raw or cooked, and are you o.k. with that? Would Kevin find you someone he would want to take a picture of? Like professors always say after asking this sort of probing question: “there are no wrong answers.” And, there aren’t. Just a thought to ponder on before the much needed Cesar Chavez break tomorrow…

--Katie Mollica

Photos:
http://beverlyhillshoneys.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Olivia-Wilde-Cosmopolitan-april-2011-Magazine.jpg
Kevin McCollister - http://eastofwestla.com/

Kevin McCollister's L.A.

QUICK REMINDER that Kevin McCollister arrives tonight to talk about his project East of West L.A. Remember: Please come with at least one question for him about his work, the blog, the city etc. He will bring some images, take us on a tour of the site and tell us more about his process.


(photo by kevin mccollister used with his permission)

East of West L.A.: Kevin McCollister's City of Angels

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."

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.

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)