THE GREAT LANDSCAPES OF THE CITY - AND WHAT MAKES THEM GREAT

I took the photo above many years ago. It was, back then, one of my favorite areas in LA. It was a forgotten area with empty, industrial buildings and heaps of dead machinery, fences half standing, half falling over, and a mighty bridge spanning the LA river, the 6th Street bridge. It was an area where iron went to rust, the industrial era version of an elephant cemetery.

Since then, the area has been heavily gentrified and is now called the "Arts District". Old buildings have been restored, and many new ones sprung up, together with hip cafes and shops and many, many super-sized artists workshops with gigantic window fronts, those really ultra clean and interior Vogue versions that real artists can never afford.

They are peopled with happily smiling and well heeled mama's boys and daddy's girls who play artist and have XL sized business cards, so they can print their XL long titles on them: writer-director-producer-actor-photographer-filmmaker titles printed.

I no longer photograph there. Back then, you could just go there without a permit and shoot, because nobody was ever there. I sometimes pass through and the arts district is definitely nice looking and good for a stroll, but you cannot shoot in an area that has so much been worked over in such a short time that it looks like a stage decoration.

A good location needs history, and the chance movements that put together houses, facades, sidewalks, trees, fences and all the city furniture without intent - just like landscapes in nature happen without intent, following the grander scheme of the law of nature.

At about the same time the graceful 6th Street bridge with its elegant steel arches was destroyed, and will be replaced by something modern and functional. The moment it opens it will start to create history, put layer on top of layer, and maybe some day it will create an amazing area... or not.

A great location for photography is seeped with natural forces. It's the city version of a wild landscape, where life, following the laws of nature and physics, unintentionally puts layer upon layer until one day, in some areas, a masterpiece of an artificial landscape grows out of a city like a man-made wilderness.

Those unplanned, unintentional landscapes are without cliche, until too many people know about it, they turn it into a cliche, and then the restore it, chasing out the originality.

The artists, meanwhile, have move on to a new, original area. Only the original areas are good places that act as a great landscape for a photography project. They are adding something real, a true character, that is in conversation with the performers and the shoot's theme.

If you want to see those original places, you have to work with original people.