gregory halpen, ZZYZX
i find it interesting the way he has captured and explored america and the people that reside there, telling a narrative throughout the photo-book that enables it to become more fantasy like, than reality. the sequencing in this book is something i aim to look at for possible inspiration towards my own publication during this major project. the sequencing shows a journey through los angeles, eventually ending in the pacific. i aim to purchase the book so i can experience it first-hand and understand the importance of sequencing in terms of producing some kind of narrative that is held within the spaces and within the images of the book. the way halpen writes about his book makes it seems potetic, a meditation on the area at hand, with beautifully aesthetic images to accompany this
‘the early settlers dubbed California The Golden State, and The Land of Milk and Honey. today there are the obvious ironies – sprawl, spaghetti junctions and skid row—but the place is not so easily distilled or visualised, either as a clichéd paradise or as its demise. there’s a strange kind of harmony when it’s all seen together—the sublime, the psychedelic, the self-destructive. like all places, it’s unpredictable and contradictory, but to greater extremes. cultures and histories coexist, the beautiful sits next to the ugly, the redemptive next to the despairing, and all under a strange and singular light, as transcendent as it is harsh’
