L.A. OBSCURA
Photographs by Robert Landau
While it is in the nature of all cities to change over time, Los Angeles seems to have an accelerated ephemeral quality. It is a city that defines itself more by current trends than past monuments, and things disappear almost as quickly as they appear. Local landmarks are paved over and the contents of yesterday’s shops, signs and attractions are quickly replaced with today’s commodities and soon forgotten. A photograph has the power to fix these fleeting visual elements in time in a way the memory often has trouble doing.
Since the mid 1970's Robert Landau has been seeking out and photographing particular aspects of the Los Angeles urban environment that for him define the city’s unique character. Having grown up in Los Angeles in the late 50’s and early 60’s Landau developed a particular fondness for the way Los Angeles looks as opposed to other large metropolitan centers he has seen. The city has a playful and inventive side to its landscape. This is due in part to the way it has developed in a spread out, mostly horizontal open space that requires an automobile to navigate its elongated distances. The streets, other than in Downtown or along Wilshire Blvd., are not lined with tall buildings, but more often with small businesses and signs of some sort that are required, as a means of survival, to catch the attention of drivers passing by.
These attention getting devices; billboards, murals, neon signs, architectural details, ornate facades, three dimensional figures, or otherwise have become part and parcel of the Los Angeles urban cultural identity. Nurtured by a sunny climate and the presence of the entertainment business they are often raised to the level of an art form, albeit a popular one based in artifice. While these subjects can easily range from the sublime to the ridiculous, Landau looks for and finds, along with the inherent humor, a measure of integrity in the whole hearted embrace of their own self worth. There is also in his work an appreciation for the hand made and hand painted quality of the signs and objects created in the pre-digital, pre-corporate age. Landau’s approach to photography kindled by studies in sociology and further refined at the California Institute of the Arts is a precise and basic one. He takes a direct and often understated path to presenting what interests him while eliminating most else. Intent on documenting as well as commenting, the photographs contain both journalistic and personal elements, particularly evident in the process of solitary discovery and thoughtful selection from the environment of what needs to be recorded. The rare appearance of people in the photographs adds a forlorn quality to the landscapes. There is also no getting away from the underlying commercial calculation of much of the subject matter and its often surreal interaction with the landscape. Robert Landau is clearly captivated by the enigmatic quality of a Los Angeles cityscape that often best reveals itself in its more obscure fragments. His camera lens by isolating and freezing in time very particular pieces of the overall puzzle allows for a quiet meditation on the city’s diverse character and transient moods. The photographs stand as both a document and a celebration of a vibrant period in the life of Los Angeles, while also hinting at an underlying melancholy amidst the artificial glee.
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