Los Angeles, California, as a place is often written and spoken of in the kind of quickened whisper of excitement, a kind of mystique or fawning over of an ideal. The mental picture about what a place producing projection screen stories had little in common with my experience of Los Angeles. While I spent a little bit of time (about four years) photographing Los Angeles, I found the light appearing to me with matted tones and warm hues. I found less glitz and glam and more remnants of the surrounding desert in every location-from Culver City to DTLA, Redondo to Topanga. Those who arrive with an expectation of the projection of Hollywood will likely be disappointment or driven to living that fantasy in mind. Those arriving with curiosity about the culture production tend to be delighted with ease. The magnitude of scale creates a sense of the anonymity amidst the sense that everything-is-possible-and-nothing-is-forever. People roam this region as an aged youth that forgets about getting old.
