No Man’s Land: Elysian Park/Chinatown 5/19
I’ve often found that Los Angeles is a city comprised of smaller cities, or towns, I’d be shocked if I was the first person to say it, but some things are truisms for a reason. But on top of that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a city with as much dead space as LA. Some of that space is parks, but largely, it’s just blank, empty lots, or underused warehouse space. Before I moved here, in warning, my mother would often snark that LA is basically just one large parking lot. And while, after having lived here for the last six years, I can easily (and happily) say that the city is more than a large parking lot, the sentiment rings true-er than I’d like to admit.
I’ve hit a bit of a wall in the last year or so, most of my photography prior to 2019 (2020 now) has been either diaristic work or documentation of Downtown Los Angeles, Big Landscapes out in National Parks, or reflections on home. Admittedly, my daily life or surroundings in DTLA have become pretty humdrum, or like, I’ve stopped seeing the novelty in them, and in a lot of ways my LA based photography has (had?) stagnated. Hard. At any rate, I’ve slowly been re-thinking and reworking what I actively hunt for, and what I’m trying to describe as a photographer.
I’m also working hard to implement the 80/20 rule to my own photography. Largely, I think I have been accidentally (or like my photography’s jumped through the roof compared to where it was when I got off the plane six years ago) and I’m not so hugely prolific in my shooting that the advancements in my work are pure grind -- don’t get me wrong I shoot regularly, and work hard at it, I’m just not the guy churning out 500 rolls a year (huge respect to that). At any rate, both printing, and making zines have helped me a lot in being more selective over what is and isn’t good, what is and isn’t redundant as a photo, etc. At any rate I’ve slowly been working on new concepts here in LA, lest I end up moving back to the East Coast, so that I can continue to create the kind of work that I want to create.
When I don’t know what else to do, I usually end up exploring. And in this case, I ended up hiking (for lack of a better term) from chinatown, over into Elysian Park, or what I thought was Elysian Park, and into a neighborhood that wasn’t quite Echo Park. While the neighborhoods were most definitely neighborhoods, I quickly found that the areas between them were both vast, and empty. This is what I found on that day.
At the time I was testing/working with my two 100’ supply of Orwo N74+ and at this point, I’d realized that pushing this specific film in broad daylight or Johnny Patiencing (for lack of a better term) wasn’t going to work -- you can read more about that in the linked review. I was also using my Minolta XD-11, and also on my all-50mm-all-the-time (Minolta Rokkor MC-PG-x 50mm f/1.4). If you’re not aware of why I’m going out of my way to talk about equipment choice (largely irrelevant), it’s purely for SEO presence. Thanks for your continued understanding.
During this walk I did manage to identify a few spots I’d like to shoot again (and did) in color. But, it did call to mind, or at least get me to think clearly about landscapes. I don’t really consider myself a landscape photographer much anymore. I mean I am, but I’ve come to loathe the label (watch out for an interview with the one and only Brendon Holt on that, or at least the ghettoization of landscape photography).
That said, I think above anything, in photography I’ve always had a stronger fixation on how or where people live, or don’t, than I do specifically with the people themselves. Likewise, I’ve often found the most fascinating bits about Los Angeles to be the neighborhoods, and the frequency of feeling like a lot of places in the city are “No Man’s Land” -- neither here nor there.
Anyway, I’ve come up with this e-zine/blueprint for more projects via this walk/set, about emptiness/negative space, either created or natural.
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