Rare Books
Discarded
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Vermont & Wilshire Blvd
Visual Materials
Black-and-white photograph of an eye-level view of people waiting for the bus at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles, California, with pedestrians and automobile traffic in the background, as well as a Texaco gasoline station and buildings.
photOV 11447
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Waiting for Los Angeles
Rare Books
"Take as a starting point the cover of this book; Anthony Hernandez's wonderful photograph of square, colorful ceramic tiles could be almost anything you might imagine it to be. A Mondrian-like painting, a random pattern, a city grid, or perhaps the work of an anonymous tile setter, brightening up the facade of a government building in South Central Los Angeles. With the passage of time, these vibrant squares have been lost beneath a coat of anti-graffiti paint. Anthony Hernandez is a photographer for whom waiting has long been a theme, with his bus stop pictures in the late 1970s, and his fishing photographs in the 1980s. Hernandez's vision is both abstract and documentary, and there is a pattern to his work in every sense of that word -- whether he is focusing on an empty waiting room, a phone hanging in a booth, or random scribbles etched on a sheet of glass. Hernandez skillfully draws attention to the simple geometric beauty that can be found in even the most utilitarian fence, wall, or window. There is not a soul in sight, but there is a strong sense that someone has been here, and there is enough to grip the attention until, perhaps, they return. With a beautifully written and provocative essay by photographer, writer and critic Allan Sekula"--Publisher's description.
653087
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Everything
Rare Books
"From January 2003 to May 2004, photographer Anthony Hernandez walked the basin of the Los Angeles River, recording what he saw--which, as the book's title implies, was more or less 'Everything.' For Hernandez, to explore the river was to explore his own past. As a boy growing up in Boyle Heights, a largely Latino neighborhood in East Los Angeles, he played in the concrete basin, or as he puts it, got into 'mischief,' exploring railroad flares in its tunnel-like storm drains ... By definition, photographs freeze time. But when they are collected and linked, as these are, they move through time--which since the dawn of figurative language has been symbolized as a river. A river is also an icon of renewal. Water fills it, evaporates, and descends again as rain. There is, however, a warning quality to the vignettes Hernandez captured in this river. Non-biodegradable dolls, the undead, gird for attack; pollutants glisten and, in the case of the bird on the cover, kill. Many images are, to be sure, breathtakingly beautiful, both in color and composition. But they suggest that we as a culture may have through negligence blown our chance at regeneration"--From essay.
653178