Anthony Hernandez

I love this one, the kids gear is so rock! I went to the exhibition @ the Christopher Grimes Gallery some time ago and fell in love with every photo on the wall.













For more than 35 years Anthony Hernandez has been known as one of Los Angeles’ mostprized photographers. His candid documentation of life in the ‘city of angels’ runs the gamut. On his return home from the war in Vietnam, Hernandez armed himself with a 35mm camera; he roamed the streets of his native LA documenting the urban spaces of the 1960’s and beyond.

As one traces the photographic history of the three decades that Hernandez covers, one is reminded of the stark dichotomy that is Los Angeles; the realm of the real and the realm of the unreal. The realm of the real encompasses the way of the much larger working class and poor while the realm of the unreal covers the Rodeo Drive of 1984, a very different (but somehow the same with Reaganomics) reality from the Orwellian classic.

Hernandez delivers the zeitgeist of the 1970’s on a silver-gelatin platter; the subjects of these very candid portraits were taken in Downtown Los Angeles. These people are the poster children of the working class; one can see the struggle of life written all over their bodies and faces. The photos exude the undercurrent of exhaustion from years of hard work and stress.

Unlike the black and white photos from 1970’s Downtown LA are the vibrantly colored ‘portraits’ of the ‘fat-cats’. Take Beverly Hills #11 1984 which managed to catch conservative talk show host of ‘The Hot Seat’ completely off-guard. The photo encapsulates the ‘benefits’ of status and wealth as Mr. Wallace, comb-over and all, walks down Rodeo hand-in-hand with a fashionable and much younger lady.

The Beverly Hills 1984 series of photos feels unreal; the glamorous lives of the few create an unnatural disconnect from the rich and the beautiful, some of the ladies captured look like fashion models from catalogues of the era. I can imagine that as Hernandez stalked his ‘prey’ he may have felt that he was engaged in a veritable safari of big money and big hair. One can surmise that the hole in the ozone layer may have been a direct result of Beverly Hills’ abundant use of hairspray during the 1980s.

Four years after his expedition into the world of the wealthy we find Hernandez in the diametric world of the homeless. In his series, Landscapes for the Homeless 1989-2007, Hernandez delivers the social sphere of the homeless person without disrupting or exploiting the lives of the denizens who inhabit the places that our society largely ignores. Freeway underpasses transformed into precarious living spaces tell the tales of the dweller whose make-shift shelter may be ripped out from under them at any given moment. The photos evoke the transitory nature of the homeless without actual documentation of the people involved.

Anthony Hernandez’s oeuvre documents a rich pictorial contemporary history of Los Angeles. The photos speak for themselves; they need no written or verbal accompaniment. One can’t help but walk away from the work of Hernandez with a feeling that one has shared in his experience.