L.A. Portraits
Completed 2016
It is embarrassing to admit, but there came a point many years ago when I realized that I rarely ever turned my camera when photographing the city. Cityscapes were landscapes, almost exclusively.
After that realization, I started to consciously shoot in a portrait orientation more often — and a sort of anthropomorphism emerged. Signs, trees, poles, doors, and other objects appeared more like figures. Clusters of things became little families. It sounds stupid (and probably obvious), but portrait format made the shots look more like, well, portraits. Go figure.
Anyway, it doesn’t really get any more “deep” than that. It’s a portrait of the city, via portraits of things in the city, all shot in a portrait format. Yet the point was not to be clever, but to find an intimacy and a humanity in quotidian urban vignettes.
After that realization, I started to consciously shoot in a portrait orientation more often — and a sort of anthropomorphism emerged. Signs, trees, poles, doors, and other objects appeared more like figures. Clusters of things became little families. It sounds stupid (and probably obvious), but portrait format made the shots look more like, well, portraits. Go figure.
Anyway, it doesn’t really get any more “deep” than that. It’s a portrait of the city, via portraits of things in the city, all shot in a portrait format. Yet the point was not to be clever, but to find an intimacy and a humanity in quotidian urban vignettes.