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Course: The J. Paul Getty Museum > Unit 2
Lesson 3: Photographers- P.H. Emerson
- P.H. Emerson's naturalistic photography
- John Humble's photographs of Los Angeles
- Camilo Vergara documents the changing urban landscape
- David Hockney's "Pearblossom Hwy"
- Eileen Cowin on her series "I See What You're Saying"
- Carrie Mae Weems on her series "From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried"
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John Humble's photographs of Los Angeles
Photographer John Humble has been documenting the Los Angeles landscape since the 1970s. All images ©John Humble, courtesy the Jan Kesner Gallery. Created by Getty Museum.
Want to join the conversation?
- How does the camera take an actual photo(1 vote)
- Does anyone know in what decade these pictures were taken? I realized that a decent amount of things in these pictures were written in Spanish, is a decent amount of the population of Las Angeles Spanish speaking?(0 votes)
Video transcript
- [voiceover] I don't
see my work as political in some ways and I do in others. I think that there is a huge
disparity in Los Angeles as there is in the US in general between the wealthy
and the not so wealthy, the haves and the have nots. And so in many of the
areas in which I photograph are areas where there are the have nots. And those are the vast
areas of Los Angeles. The places like Pacific Palisades, and Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills, those kinds of areas are actually a very, very tiny part of Los Angeles. Many people think of those areas when they think of Los Angeles, but in fact they represent a
very, very small percentage of what Los Angeles is. And the landscape that
I photograph represents, for the most part, the majority of what
there is in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is huge, it
spreads over a vast area and almost all of it looks
the way my photographs look. So in that way the work
is somewhat political. I don't go out purposefully
to make political photographs, but I think because of my own orientation, because of my way of
thinking about things, I think they probably take on
some kind of political tone. I think they're beautiful. I find there's a kind of
poignancy about the pictures, especially as time goes on. For example that Thrift Store picture that you see on the wall is gone. That's another place entirely now, there's no more Thrift Store there. So it seems to me that there's not only an irony in the photographs, but there's also this also
this kind of subtle beauty that if you look at it in
a certain way you see it. Most people don't I think. Most people would drive down the street and think this is a
pretty ugly part of town. But I don't see it that way. The reason Los Angeles exists here today is because of the Los Angeles River. When the first European
settlers came to this area they found that the Indians
were living all along the banks of the river. And that was their
sustenance, they fished there, they caught game, they
used the water for crops, all of that sort of thing. When the early settlers were here it wasn't an issue when the river flooded, but the more people came
here it because an issue. On several occasions the
river overran its banks and caused huge swaths of destruction and finally in 1938 the decision was made by the Corps of Engineers to
encase that river in concrete. And it's been very successful. The river does not overflow
and cause damage anymore. But it's not really a river anymore, that's what most people don't
understand about the LA River. It used to be a river, essentially it was
exploited to extinction. Mostly what the Los Angeles
River is today is a storm drain, so that when we have rains it takes the water and
runs it out to the ocean, and it also is a conduit for waste water from the Glendale Reclamation Plant. And so when you see
water in the river today you're either looking at storm water or treated waste water. I like the river just
the way it is frankly. It does just what's supposed to do and maybe it's not very pretty, but it's a functional river. I mean, it's a functional storm drain and waste water conduit now. And while I think the plans
to revitalize the river are all well and good, I think the money could be better put into solving homeless
problems in Los Angeles and some of the other social
problems that we have here.