LOS ANGELES: City of Angels... and Demons. For the lucky few, the beautiful, the well-born, a utopia - endless sunshine, beaches and swimming pools, peopled by vigorous, healthy bodies; for many others, a dystopia - endless, clogged freeways, smog, fearfulness, a city without a center, or (it is sometimes said), a soul. In the skies above, glittering Hollywood stars; on the hard pavements below, ever-present terror of earthquake and social unrest. Dream or nightmare? Fact or fiction? Perhaps the truth of this quixotic, haunting place lies somewhere between the perceived extremes.
This complex, sprawling city has long fascinated photographers of many stripes: studio professionals, industrial photographers, photojournalists, fashion and glamour photographers, amateurs, tourists and art photographers. The exhibition offers the widest possible range of these approaches. It features more than a hundred famous and unknown photographers who together have documented, imagined, celebrated, criticized and mythologized the city from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.
There are seven sections to the exhibition: Garden, Move, Work, Dwell, Play, Clash, and Dream. These sections are meant to help us think about key aspects of life in Los Angeles, aspects which touch everyone, rich or poor, in fundamental ways. However, the seven sections are only meant as a rough guide to the rich pictorial terrain, and viewers are encouraged to strike out on their own journey through the highways and the byways of this compelling city.
This Side of Paradise:
Los Angeles (1865-2008)
Musée de l'Elysée
31 Jan - 19 Apr 2009
Lausanne, Switzerland
www.elysee.ch
Top: Larry Sultan, Femme avec des bigoudis, 2003
