Fall 2022 Modernism Class Project

LA Through the Pocket Mirror

S La Cienega begins in one of Los Angeles’ poorest neighborhoods and spans nearly thirteen miles north until it is abruptly cut off by Sunset Blvd, one of the city's famous streets. For LA Magazine, Eric Mercado writes, “The boulevard we know as La Cienega, which in Spanish means “the swamp.” That’s because long before the street became home to Restaurant Row or the Beverly Center, it was marshland.” While the street is heavily traversed and is known locally, it is overshadowed and overlooked by the other streets of Los Angeles, which hold the attention of the general public. Despite the street’s famous “Restaurant Row” of Beverly Hills, home to many of the city's nicest restaurants, the road is largely devoid of the icons which LA is famous for. The connotation of La Cienega has been built up alongside the street, and for most of the thirteen miles, it is associated with the ‘low culture’ Los Angeles most locals want to ignore, and the rest of the world is ignorant of. Through the use of double exposure, Dee Williams’ La Cienega (Chandelier) symbolizes the class divide La Cienega is home to. The first picture is of one of La Cienega’s many ‘do-it-yourself’ style car washes alongside a few other shops, cars, and a few native trees. The second picture, which lays over the first photograph, is one of an opulent room, home to a grand chandelier and a lavishly-framed window. The second is layered over the first, creating the illusion that the viewer is looking out through the great chandelier and window onto this pedestrian street. Taken in 2011, this photograph further addresses the 2008 financial crisis, which left many of the community’s low-income families in ruin while the upper class remained untouched and thrived. On the image, Chapman University’s Escalette Collection writes, “Billboards, signs, and posters reflecting social values are shown in shop windows, on parking lots, and around freeways. The silver gelatin photographs depict expansive, visually emphatic, and occasionally empty places in downtown and the suburbs.” La Cienega (Chandelier) implicates the viewer in the moral compass of Los Angeles. She asks what it is to stand safely inside one's home when just outside businesses are rapidly closing and people in one's own community are going hungry.







 


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