John Smith’s excellent silver gelatin prints show a gritty City of Angels at its best, shot during what he calls that “civil twilight,” the half-hour before the sun peeks over the horizon.
Lonely shots of Randy’s doughnut shop near Los Angeles International Airport or staples covering a telephone poll, like monarch butterflies clustered on a eucalyptus tree, show a texture not seen in daylight hours. A white dress in sharp focus in a well-lit shop window gives life to an otherwise empty street. The Toronto subway is not just an underground tunnel, but a solitary and epic journey.
Smith cites Ansel Adams as a big influence, and his black-and-white images of otherwise seedy liquor joints or highway overpasses converging in graceful solitude are made magical by slow exposure film that creates starbursts around street lamps.
Don Saban also uses photography to find the sacred in the profane of late-night Los Angeles. His archival pigment prints of L.A.’s various neon-lit movie theaters bring intense carnival color to the art-deco architecture.
“Paradise Motel” does, indeed, look heavenly in purple neon, even with a guy leaning in to the office window trying to negotiate a cheap room rate.
“El Rey” shows that Wilshire Boulevard theater in bright Mexican-flag-colored lights, and “Circus Liquor” contrasts a cheesy, neon-lit circus clown beckoning before a marquee reading “God Bless America.”
Saban’s love of kitsch memorializes such L.A. landmarks as Tail o’ the Pup and Tommy’s hamburger shack. He even makes a McDonald’s look like Candyland.
Matthew Cramer finds beauty in the indistinguishable boxy design of orange and green structures that could be apartment buildings and could be railroad cars.
