something to remember as I move into this project...

ROGER FENTON: The Valley of the Shadow of Death, Crimea, 1855.

DECLAN HAUN: Justice, 1963.

DOROTHEA LANGE: Funeral Cortege, End of an Era in a Small Town, California, 1938.

Images & text from: The Photographer's Eye, John Szarkowski.
(one of the most influential critics & curators in all of photographic history)

The Detail:

Once he left the studio, it was impossible for the photographer to copy the painters' schemata. He could not stage-manage the battle, like Uccello or Velasquez, bringing together elements which had been separate in space and time, nor could he rearrange the parts of his picture to construct a design that pleased him better.

From the reality before him he could only choose that part that seemed relevant and consistent, and that would fill his plate. If he could not show the battle, explain its purpose and its strategy, or distinguish its heroes from its villians, he could show what was too ordinary to paint: the empty road scattered with cannon balls, the mud encrusted on the caisson's wheels, the anonymous faces, the single broken figure by teh wall.

Intuitively, he sought and found the significant detail. His work, incapable of narrative, turned toward symbol.

more from venice beach.

In 1997 Mike Sager wrote an incredible piece of journalism covering the gangs of Venice. “Death in Venice” details the lives of two “homeboys,” Yogi and Big Gato.

Sager quotes from a Los Angeles Times article in 1979:

Swept by smog-free ocean breezes, bordered on the south by the affluent playground called Marina del Rey… Oakwood is a strangely incongruous center of poverty and tragedy. While crime and gang violence tear at the community from within, mounting coastal real-estate values threaten to crush it from with out.

Sager:

Lil’ Gato looks up from the floor. He’s remembering something. The neighborhood. The gang. The tradition. He and Yogi are members of V-13, the Venice Gang, among the oldest of the 400 gangs in Los Angeles. Theirs is a gang with history. For more than 30 years, Chicano homeboys have claimed this neighborhood, one square mile of palm trees and poverty in the middle of Venice, California, a little piece of barrio in the heart of California lifestyle.

But as predicted, “mounting coastal real-estate values” have crushed this culture, steeped in history and pride,from the outside in. Now I can stroll down Abbot-Kinney and spoon my Pink Berry while mining expensive thrift shops and perusing art galleries. I feel at ease with the arty street culture as I corral my designer dog onto the sidewalk, and joke with Pete about our fresh jobs and shiny lives.


Sager writes, "Today, everything is different. Gangs are no longer about turf and respect. Instead, they are about drugs and money."

He ends his article inside one of the boy's ramshackle bedrooms. Yogi and Big Gato smoke crack instead of hunting down Culver City gang members. In the old days, shirking this responsibility would have been a sin of dire disrespect & dishonor. But crack, or “rock,” has corroded the complex system of pride and turf.

A few moments pass. Big Gato stares. His mouth is pulled back in a tight grimace, and above his lip are little drops of sweat. His teeth are clenched, and you can see the strain in the muscles of his jaw. Then his eyes drift to the carpet. There are lots of little white pieces of paper and lint and cloth and cigarette ash down there. To him, each pieee ooks like a rock. Could be a rock.

‘Gimme a blast,’ says Big Gato.

‘We was just going to get a 10 from Blinky,’ says Yogi.

‘A 10?’ says Big Gato. He chews his thumb. ‘A 10?’

‘Yeah,’ says Yogi, warming. ‘We were gonna go get a 10.’

‘Well, go get it,’ says Big Gato.

‘What about Culver City?’ asks Tequila.

‘Culver City?’ asks Big Gato. ‘Oh, We’ll get them later.'

if you have time, check out Mike Sager's website. he's an interesting guy. really.