Riding the beast - Los Angeles' art scene

Afterimage, July-August, 1999 by Thomas McGovern

Attempting to define photography and photographic practice in greater Los Angeles is as much of a challenge as trying to define the city itself. Just over 100 years ago, iconoclasts, fleeing the more conventional, repressive and class-conscious east coast, arrived here to do their own thing. The sheer size of L.A. is formidable and artists here have not gravitated to one area, but have fanned out across the region. This situation produces work that is highly individualistic, emphasizing self-discovery. L.A., of course, is inextricably intertwined with Hollywood, that mythical place where anybody can be anything and where nothing is too predictable or banal to be marketed.

Movie-making, with its crass commercialism, might seem incongruous with the heady act of artmaking but both share an intense relationship with aesthetics and, if nothing else, a profitable industry that can provide day jobs to artists. Hollywood's business is about fantasy and creating an imaging vessel into which viewers can pour themselves. Photography can be the still translation of this mass media hypnosis. Photography appears real and even though we don't believe what we see, we are engrossed by its images. Artists in L.A. embrace this inevitable melding of high/low culture and commerce. They understand the implicit power of the photograph to misinform rather than to inform r to manipulate rather than to educate and they choose to work with the photograph as more than just an image, but also as an object.

The L.A. art scene is a diverse mix of museums and commercial, non-profit and college/university galleries spread over a 50-mile radius so getting around to see everything each month is impossible. However, the location of a gallery in a storefront in San Pedro or Pasadena doesn't mean it is a provincial, uninteresting venue. L.A. is famous for its shifting (sometimes literally) landscape, and Angelenos accept that. Since some of the most exciting venues are small, artist-run spaces, viewers are not intimidated by driving an hour to a gallery they have never heard of.

In L.A., photography is less marginalized now than it has been in the past, but the photo ghetto (composed of galleries that show only photography), though shrinking, is still active and will certainly continue to exist to serve its narrow market. While these galleries show younger artists, they remain separate from the mainstream contemporary art world. Within the ghetto, what sells seems to be the modern masters and traditional photography from the school of visual inspiration. Gallery owner Jan Kesner, who has been part of the photography scene for 20 years, said that she first dealt with a lot of conceptual photo-based work but shifted her focus since she could not sell anything: "I still show challenging work that doesn't necessarily sell, and I balance it with a twentieth-century master that will."(1) With the increased number of contemporary art galleries that show photography she lamented: "The sad thing is that some of the really fine photo-based artists don't even want to show at a quasi-photography gallery. It still has a stigma."

That stigma seems to arise from the static, repetitive exhibitions in the photography galleries and their narrow field of collectors. Evidence of this was found at this year's "Photo LA" - an international trade show for photography dealers. Although the show was crowded, the work hanging in the individual dealers' booths was disappointing. This is not to say there were no beautiful or wonderful photographs, but simply that there were no images by L.A.'s most important young photographers - no Uta Barth, Miles Coolidge, Sharon Lockhart or Catherine Opie. Nor were there photographs by the established Los Angeles masters - John Baldessari, Lewis Baltz, Ellen Brooks, Eileen Cowin, John Divola or Robert Heinecken. Apparently, the photo ghetto's collectors do not buy work by these new or established imagemakers. "Photo LA" followed the marketing rule of supply and demand. Since most people will not buy what they do not know, for this fair to not try to persuade collectors to expand their view is a sign of stagnation.

One interesting bridge between the photo ghetto and the mainstream contemporary art world is Craig Krull Gallery. Krull spoke of how a gallery can move with the times and still be an extension of the gallerist's vision. The work he exhibits reflects his broad range of taste in art and culture. "I happen to be interested in photo-based media, though not exclusively. I don't like to call my space a photo gallery. It's a gallery that shows mostly photo-based work. I've been hesitant to attend photo fairs because it ghettoizes what you do."

Krull's gallery shows a wide range of work, some of which could be categorized as traditional photography (e.g., Julius Shulman's architectural photography or Charles Brittin's photographs of the early L.A. art scene) and some very provocative and innovative work that could easily be shown in other contemporary art galleries (e.g., Jenny Okun's cubist-inspired IRIS prints, Robbert Flick's video stills and Jo Ann Callis's recent: paintings).