Promised Land
May 3, 2007 – June 2, 2007
These photos were made in Southern California, mostly Los Angeles, between 1981 and 1992. I had recently moved there from Texas after spending the previous four years studying graphic design and photography at the University of Houston. Having been a dedicated surfer for many years, I thought of this move as my journey to the Promised Land; a place I could live, work, and surf. I was also developing a compulsive photography practice. When I discovered downtown Los Angeles, Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Hollywood, and all the other ethnically diverse, and at least to me, somewhat exotic neighborhoods to the east of the beach communities, I knew I had found a photographic gold mine. Instead of palm trees, beautiful people, and fast cars, I found a place that seemed almost out of time, with a gritty, third-world, film noirish feeling. For the next 11 years, I photographed obsessively in these neighborhoods. It was exciting, fun, and sort of disorienting in a mostly good, albeit edgy, way. I learned a lot about the culture of Los Angeles County and about myself as a photographer. This is a record of those experiences and all the people and neighborhoods which made up my unexpected, but richly rewarding, Promised Land.
