For the past several years, I have been taking photos in and around greater and lesser Los Angeles, always with the aim of publishing a large collection of them to be called ANGELENO. Because as a photographer I have found few things on this planet as visually compelling as a human being in the process of being human, and I’ve also discovered that every kind of person in the universe of man seems to live in Los Angeles. Of course, if there is a whole other kind of person I’ve never seen, I wouldn’t know to miss it – but I have been forever exalted by the presence of such an immense array of humanity.
At first the book was going to be called Caras de Los Angeles; Faces of the Angels, as these are photographs of the resident angels of the Angel City. But Angeleno sums up what the book is about because it is so specific and yet so general at once, much like Los Angeles, this city of contradictions, containing, as Ftzgerald said about Hollywood, equations too complex for the normal man to hold in his head at once. An Angeleno, in my definition, is any person who lives here now – no Angeleno has to be native to be an Angeleno, which is part of the beauty of the thing. This is a place of inclusion, despite infamous exceptions. This is a place where the black sheep of every family can come to be accepted. And all the white sheep, too, of course. All sheep are drawn to our famous city, as are all shepherds. As Dylan wrote, “The mountains are filled with lost sheep.” Here’s where we come to be found.
And so with gratitude forever to readers of Bluerailroad who have supported us since the start, and to those who come to enjoy these photographs, I wish you all a productive and inspirational 2012, not the ending, as so many might suggest, but the start of something big. I received an email from Yoko Ono today, and I mention it not just out of pure pride that I get emails from Yoko Ono, who I adore, but to share her message, which, like so many of the messages she’s delivered through these decades, is an affirmative one: “2012 is the beginning of the next millenium of our golden age.”