I’m off tomorrow for a five-day trip to Southern California. I was due for a week off and Kate suggested I take a solo trip with a focus on photography. Wonderful idea, I said, and immediately thought of LA. I haven’t been there since I was 13 or 14 and am fascinated by the place. Hard to explain what the fascination is, but I think if you grow up in Seattle (or Portland or Vancouver), Los Angeles is sort of this West Coast measuring stick by which you partly view or identify where you live. So we craft an identity of ourselves and our city in contrast and comparison with Los Angeles. Of course, Seattleites do that with Vancouver, and Portland and San Francisco and New York too, but Los Angeles is the West Coast Oz in all that that implies. Part of this is because my parents lived in San Francisco before moving to Seattle and so I inherited/absorbed that intra-California rivalry as well.
And of course, there is the mystique, that you become aware of as a child through television, movies, and advertising. In this narrative LA is a magical, exotic, rich, sun-drenched paradise. Americans know Los Angeles like no other city because they’ve seen it countless times on rectangular screens and lived there through other people’s stories. But viewing a city on a screen means we only see what is within that rectangle. And so to me, the mystique of LA is both the fantasy within the rectangle (or frame) and the unknown or incomplete world that lies outside of it. The latter element is exacerbated by the sheer size and sprawl of the place. It’s hard to grasp or get a grip on what the LA outside the rectangle is. And what is at the seams, on the margins?
How does this relate to my photography? I’m not sure yet. When I photograph a place, there’s usually an inner dialogue going on. For me photography is a catalyst for experience, thought and exploration. Many people have a stereotype of photography as disengaging you from experience. In a sense this is true. But I think that any disengagement (sound is there, but in a different way) is often replaced by intensity of other aspects. It’s definitely what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described as a flow experience and even trancelike sometimes. So my hope is that I get to that place and can capture images that straddle the margins of that rectangle. And the usual stuff, too.
But LA is just a little less than half of my trip. Here’s my rough and admittedly overpacked itinerary:
Tuesday: Los Angeles
Wednesday: Los Angeles
Thursday: Palm Springs/Joshua Tree
Friday: Anza Borrego/ San Diego
Saturday: San Diego/Los Angeles
If you’ve got any ideas or suggestions, please send them my way. And if you have any thoughts about personal identity and place/home, I’d like to hear them.
