DesignLA the Los Angeles Times new Sunday magazine, created by Michael Wollaeger, former managing editor of Architectural Digest. Michael possesses a great knowledge of architecture, interior design, the art community, and our shared endless curiosity about things LA.
Built in the era of the streetcars - now across the street from where the buses sleep
Graffiti mural by my friends, RETNA and figurative artist Ricardo Estrada
Looking up towards downtown Los Angeles from Alameda, across Central Ave, from the old railroad produce yards
Massive buildings, millions of square feet - impossible to imagine until you are standing there
Young and happening, great energy - dogs to work.
Previously home to American Apparel
New shops, furniture, fashion and design. New media - game design, video companies
Left: " Los- Mulholland Radio Tower " Joe Prime Reza/Jim McHugh 24" x 20" signed and numbered- edition of 150 unframed. Right: "213- Washington and Crenshaw" David Cavazo Big Sleeps / Jim McHugh 24" x 20" signed and numbered- edition of 150 - Each print $150 + shipping
As shown above, Courtyard Editions is issuingtwo high quality, archival photographic prints, priced with the desire to make art works from the "LA Neighborhoods" project available to everyone. So
many so people have asked about acquiring prints from the work
that we have been doing together over the past few years. These are two very beautiful images that represent our unique look at LA.
A single section of the panorama used as the supporting layer of the collage for "213 - Washington Blvd." Polaroid T55
A 9 ft. canvas of Washington Blvd. - hand styles by Sleeps and Prime - INNOVA Digital
Artists Joe "Prime" Reza and David Cavazo, aka "Big Sleeps," are such legends, born of this disappearing LA era. These prints are a true fusion of photographic imagery and territorial street hand-styles. The imagery investigates LA and the secret, hidden sub-culture of graffiti writing, hand styles. "213 Washington Blvd. and Crenshaw " reflects aneighborhood abandoned to immigrants and people of color in post WWII Los Angeles that is now rapidly gentrifying. For those unaware, 213 was the original and for a long time, only area code in LA.
An early legend among street writers, now Joe "Prime" Reza is a painter who's works are held in the permanent collection of the Getty Museum and are exhibited in galleries world wide, Prime'snewest works can be seen through Jan. 17, 2017 at the LA Louver Gallery, Venice, CA. in the exhibition "ROLLCALL" curated by Gajin Fujita.
Shooting in Prime's studio for the exhibition AFTERMATH - 2016 - photo: Patrick House
Big Sleeps signing "Washington and Crenshaw"
Big Sleeps is truly a survivor of the streets that nearly swallowed him whole, streets that remain bound by intricate, spray-painted letter styles which act as a true code of survival called "the placa." Cavazo's paintings can also be viewed thru January 17 at LA Louver Gallery, Venice, CA. in their "Rollcall"exhibition.
Studio van near Central Ave. in South Central LA on the very rainy night when we signed our prints
Big Sleeps - Prime - Jim McHugh at Prime's studio, Dec. 14, 2016
The McHugh Studio 323 466 2890 - jim@jimmchugh.com
The LA Neighborhoods project has been developed with the support of INNOVA Digital Art, supplying the newest archival technologies and digital surfaces for maximum image integrity.
It's been an exciting time this summer photographing and printing a variety of new pictures. While in Colorado for an August exhibit in Aspen I was fortunate to spent several days photographing mountain landscapes with my Speed Graphic and Polaroid. My first challenge was how to approach this subject matter with my camera in a fresh way?
I will forever be moved and influenced by 19th. century pictoralist photography. I can almost feel the photographer at work. Because of the primitive materials and technologies available at the time, photographic results were completely unpredictable. Polaroid is very similar, every image has a slightly different different quality. The pictures of photographer Edweard Muybridge and landscape painter Albert Bierstadt always fascinate me. There is so much emotion in the imagery. Muybridge is often defined by his “motion” studies, but to me his landscapes are the most stunningly. They are dark and powerfully compelling! Bierstadt’s canvases of Yosemite Valley are filled with vision! So much color and imagination. More than most contemporary photography can produce.
With Muybridge and other Pictoralist's work there is such a sense of struggle and triumph in the imagery. Not only must the photographer have the "Eye" to see; but the prints themselves are so precious, difficult to make! They look three dimensional, like charcoal drawings.
By merging older analog systems and digital technologies I am trying to create in my prints a slight confusion, an uncertainty. I hope the viewer’s eye will linger longer on the surface. More like a radio drama than a film; the listener is allowed to supply the unseen. I will be heading back to Colorado this week.
As the grandson of a golden-era Hollywood songwriter, acclaimed photographer Jim McHugh is heir to a particular experience and vision of Los Angeles that's all romance, noir, silhouetted buildings, and casual luxury. With his knack for photographing buildings in the intimate style of a portraitist, and in such a way as to erase all traces of intervening history, McHugh's photographs capture the ghost of what was — and might be again — LA's promise of beauty and the sunny, shadowy, glittering character of America in its vintage red-carpet regalia.
– Shana Nys Dambrot Flavor Pill- New York • December, 2009
