This is the Los Angeles that John Humble loves... this is the Los Angeles that John Humble photographs. From the roof view of his 1970's van (John built a platform on his van's roof to accommodate his large-format camera and provide a better view for recording the street and its context), from the freeway overpasses, from the water... his handiwork and craftsmanship... what he makes... serves as a window into this feeling of "L.A.". It is a certain and loving view into its character, into its beauty. Like Eggleston with his beloved South, this is a personal diary into the sprawl, a look at the skin of the city… a view into the vast ocean of concrete ugliness… no, a celebration of the ugliness... a beauty that is this concrete ugliness, an ugliness that is beauty. In the concrete and in the metal, in the waterways (In the late 1990s Humble began documenting the Los Angeles River, charting its 51-mile course from the headlands in Canoga Park to its mouth in Long Beach) and in the electric towers, in the foliage and in the steel bars... in the man made, in the man-nature and in the feeling that comes in viewing these things... in the lives that live amongst these things, amongst this concrete... this is a living monolith.
Doug Rickard (American Suburb X).
I never photograph the places I love the most. WHY. Because I think they loose all of their meanings when I photograph them. Like I cant capture what they mean to me. I dont feel I've done them justice. Saying that, how many places could I photograph as truly meaningful? My images strip away something, they're not de-humanised per se as the whole point of many of them (aside being documents) is to show the human impact..?! maybe. Atget has always been my photographic hero. Humble has been doing a similiar thing (well, so has Eggleston, Sally Mann, Richard Billingham etc etc etc) documenting something that means alot to him. I cant make that connection. I need new places, new things to photograph. without any memories. does this affect my work? how? for better.. or for worse...
For the Mishka Henner brief (M.H.B.) I've initially chosen David Baileys NW1. I like it's simplicity and its intimacy. The simplicity? Yes. I can manage this. The intimacy? PROBLEM. Do I engage with the subject?
