112 pages Text(s) by Tod Papageorge Photographs by Tod Papageorge 25,4 x 28 cm Language: English Hardback Publisher: Stanley Barker 2023
In 1975, Tod Papageorge traveled across America, ending his journey on the beaches of Los Angeles. There, under a blinding light, he took some of his first medium-format photographs (6 x 9 cm). In 1978, he returned to Los Angeles to develop these early images, and during shorter stays in 1981 and 1988, he continued to expand the series.
“I think part of what these beach photos are about is the contrast between our preconceived ideas of a place and what that place actually turns out to be. In this case—Los Angeles and its coastline—those ideas are especially strong, shaped powerfully by films and popular music. So what I set out to do in this project was to examine those assumptions (at least as I understood them) through photography’s descriptive power, to see what those two semi-myths—the surfer world and life on Southern California beaches—‘really’ looked like.”
Tod Papageorge is an American photographer and educator who began his photographic career on the streets of New York in the mid-1960s. From 1979 to 2013, he led the photography program at Yale School of Art. He is also known for his photographs of Studio 54, a body of work from the late 1970s that was published by Stanley/Barker in 2014.
