Paris Photo Fair Los Angeles 2014: Reviews and Photographs

LA confidential: The world’s most storied police force opens up its photography archive – and the result is worthy of Hollywood

The photographs have been unearthed for “Unedited!: the LAPD Photo Archives”, an exhibition showing at this month’s second annual Paris Photo fair in Los Angeles

Tim Walker

Sunday 27 April 2014

WARNING: CONTAINS DISTURBING IMAGES

The photograph shows three men in suits and a fourth in a long coat, standing by a car at the side of a dirt road on a flat plain panelled with fields. Power lines stretch to the grey horizon. The men could be property developers, surveying the site of a new out-of-town supermarket, but for a single detail: one of them has curled his hand into the shape of a pistol, and he is pointing it at his companions.

The picture, taken in 1963, comes from the archive of the Los Angeles Police Department. The three men in suits are cops, there to recreate the climax of the Onion Field kidnappings, one of the more notorious cases in the history of the LAPD – a police force that, in its 145-year history, has seen more notorious cases than any other. The fourth man (on the far right) is Jimmy Lee Smith, one of the suspects.

On the night of 9 March, two LAPD officers had been kidnapped in Hollywood and driven north into California’s agricultural heartland. One, Ian Campbell, was shot dead in an onion field; the other, Karl Hettinger, ran off into the dark and escaped. The killers, Gregory Powell and Smith, known as “Jimmy Youngblood”, were captured the next day. They received death sentences, but evaded execution when California abolished the death penalty several years later.

The photograph has been unearthed for “Unedited!: the LAPD Photo Archives”, an exhibition showing at this month’s second annual Paris Photo fair in Los Angeles. The fair takes place on the soundstages of Paramount Studios in Hollywood, where some of the shots are being displayed in the shop façades of the studio’s New York backlot – a fake Manhattan street – meaning they are “in” LA and New York simultaneously.

A staple of the French capital’s cultural calendar for the past 18 years, Paris Photo is the world’s biggest photography fair. An American expansion became inevitable, says its director, Julien Frydman, because the US is the world’s biggest market for photography. Though most of the fair is devoted to sales by some 150 galleries, Frydman explains, “We also create some shows to nourish the pleasure of the audience, and their understanding of photography.”

Hence “Unedited!”, which comprises of images culled from a collection of more than a million photos taken by police officers and criminologists over the decades, now stored in LA’s City Records Center. Many were once used as evidence by the LAPD Special Investigations k Division, which was set up during the 1920s, making it the oldest crime lab in the US.

 

Unedited!: the LAPD Photo Archives

1 of 8

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 

Next

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Among the pictures in the exhibition is one from the investigation of the famous “Black Dahlia” case: the gruesome 1947 murder of the young actress Elizabeth Short, whose body had been comprehensively mutilated. Despite (or perhaps even due to) the extensive and sensational newspaper coverage of the case, her killer was never caught. There are images, too, from the investigation of the Manson murders, which brought terror to LA in the summer of 1969.

“The LAPD photographs were originally documents,” Frydman says. “But if you select them carefully today, they become a piece of art. Most images we think of when we talk about film noir and the LAPD are images we learnt from the cinema. The images in our mind are not real. So when you look at these photographs, it’s hard to decide whether they’re real documents or from movies. There’s a confusion between fiction and reality. Paramount Studios is a dream location for [the exhibition]: a place that builds images somewhere between fiction and reality.”

Thanks to its persistent representation in movies from Chinatown to Beverly Hills Cop (both, incidentally, produced by Paramount), the LAPD is the most famous police force in the world – though at times in its history it has also been infamous. The department suffered for decades from a reputation for institutional racism. The treatment of black civilians by LAPD officers sparked the Watts Riots of 1965 and the Rodney King Riots of 1992. The 1995 prosecution of OJ Simpson fell apart after investigating officer Mark Fuhrman was accused of racism.

The two faces of the LAPD were encapsulated in one man, William H Parker, who served as chief from 1950 to 1966, the longest tenure in the department’s history. Parker is credited with modernising the force, but John Buntin, author of the book LA Noir, has described him as “Los Angeles’ greatest and most controversial chief of police”; Parker’s is the semi-corrupt department portrayed in James Ellroy’s LA Confidential.

The relationship between the LAPD and the screen is literalised by one archive image involving Parker on the set of the TV cop series Dragnet in 1963, the same year as the Onion Field incident. Parker, the most famous of all LAPD officers, is seen conversing with Jack Webb, the actor who played Sergeant Joe Friday – the era’s most famous fictional cop.

Paris Photo Los Angeles is showing today at Paramount Studios, Hollywood (see parisphoto.com/losangeles for more)

—

LA TIMES

At Paris Photo fair in Hollywood, vintage LAPD forensic photos have film noir feel

• Posted By: Times Editors
• Posted On: 3:03 p.m. | April 22, 2014

By Craig Nakano

To Julien Frydman, a new exhibition of decades-old Los Angeles police crime scene photos is not so much a collection of facts in black and white but rather one big ambiguous storm of gray, a trove of stories where truth isn’t a neat circle but rather a shape-shifting cloud open to interpretation.

Co-curated by Frydman with Robin Blackman and Merrick Morton of L.A.-based fototeka, “Unedited! The LAPD Photo Archives” includes more than 80 forensic images taken from the 1920s to 1960s, all culled from more than 1 million pictures archived at the City of Records Center in downtown L.A. The exhibition is one of the draws at Paris Photo Los Angeles, running this weekend in Hollywood.

Frydman, who also is director of the fair, said his “Unedited” selections are not just simple illustrations of crime scenes but rather complex stories, in some cases images in which the police photographer is clearly working to go beyond mere documentation. “You don’t know if it’s real life or film still,” Frydman said. “They have a strong narrative, beautiful aesthetic, multiple layers of perfection.”

The photos also take on new meaning and new context given the setting of Paris Photo: the Paramount Pictures studio lot, with more than 80 exhibitors, artist signings and conversations with curators taking place amid sound stages, fake streets and other forms of the unreal real, Frydman said. “You are in between fiction and reality, which has a lot of to do with photography.”

Among the other exhibitors is Aperture, which will show photographs, celebrate 30 years of publishing with Richard Misrach and feature several book signings including projects by Danny Lyon, Richard Renaldi and Mitch Dobrowner. Renaldi’s project, “Touching Strangers,” will be published next month.

Paris Photo Los Angeles begins Friday, April 25, and runs through Sunday, April 27. Tickets can be purchased online here.

Also this weekend, two other photography events of note will be taking place aimed to inspire and reignite.  For those wanting to get out of town, head out to the desert for the venerable ninth annual Palm Springs Photo Festival starting Sunday, April 27,  through May 2, with one-on-one portfolio reviews, networking events and intense hands-on workshops with master photographers like Greg Gorman, Gregory Heisler and Duane Michals.

Closer to home and just down the street from Paris Photo, check out Photo Independent beginning Friday, April 25, and going through Sunday, April 27, at Raleigh Studios in the heart of Hollywood. Making its inaugural debut, the art fair will feature exhibitors and an opportunity for the photographic community to meet up and exchange ideas on the business and craft of photography with panel discussions and lectures. Highlights include a curated exhibit with Police guitarist and photographer Andy Summers on opening night as well as a panel discussion with noted documentary photographer Doug Menuez on Saturday.

===

 

==

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Paris Photo L.A. Preview: The Events and Exhibits to Visit

11:01 AM PDT 4/24/2014 by Maxwell Williams

Courtesy of Fototeka Los Angeles/LAPD

“Unedited!: The LAPD Photo Archives” exhibition

The annual photography fair, attended by the likes of Morgan Freeman, David Lynch and Drew Barrymore, returns on April 25 with more than 80 galleries participating at the Paramount Studios lot.

The Paris Photo L.A. art fair made an inaugural splash last year, from the unique setting on the Paramount Studios “New York Street” backlot to the panel discussions that included Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner in conversation with photographer Gregory Crewdson. The fair, satellite to the famed Paris Photo fair that takes places in the French capital every November, was a major success, drawing 13,500 viewers, including such names as Morgan Freeman, David Lynch, Paramount CEO Brad Grey, CAA’s Richard Lovett, Drew Barrymore and Sean Penn. On April 25 through 27, they’ll do it all again, with more than 80 galleries participating.

our editor recommends

The Hollywood Reporter to Sponsor Screening of Dennis Hopper’s ‘The Last Movie’ at Paris Photo L.A. Fair

Sean Penn, Giorgio Armani Put Focus on Haiti at Paris Photo L.A. Opening

PHOTOS: Hollywood’s Top Art Collectors Pose With L.A.’s Hottest Artists

“The experiment was indeed successful,” says Paris Photo director Julien Frydman of last year’s debut. “Nevertheless, we learned that people enjoyed walking around, so we needed to create easier ways to move from one soundstage to the other. It will create an even more dynamic experience. We also added some more programming.”

Among those looking forward to this year’s show is Jodie Foster who tells The Hollywood Reporter that her love of photography stems from the fact that “every image is a singular moment in time, something that happened for a split second and will never be repeated. Owning that image is like reliving some special secret.” (Among the works in her collection are pieces by Man Ray, John Outterbridge, Diane Arbus and Rinko Kawauchi.)

PHOTOS: THR Art Issue: Top 10 L.A. Artists Coveted by Hollywood

Below are the must-see exhibitions and events this weekend.

1. LAPD archive show

One of the new programs is an exhibition of work culled from the Los Angeles Police Department archives. Frydman worked with Fototeka Gallery’s Merrick Morton, who is a reserve officer in the LAPD as well as a photographer, and who, with his wife Robin Blackman been entrusted to organize the City Records Center’s massive collection of images taken for the Special Investigations Division of the LAPD. “I looked for specific pictures that moved from that document role to a narrative work of art,” says Frydman of the approximate 80 images that include pictures from the Manson Family and the Black Dhalia murders. “It’s the same work, but if you look at them in a different way, they become like film stills. You don’t know if they are from film or from reality.”

2. Dennis Hopper screening

On Friday, The Hollywood Reporter will sponsor a special presentation of The Last Movie, a 1971 film made by the late Dennis Hopper.

“We opened the door last year about trying to nourish the relationship between photography and moving images,” says Frydman. “Through Dennis Hopper being himself a photographer, and a filmmaker, and an actor — he’s a great symbol of that. The Last Movie is a film that I would say is more of an artistic statement about what making a film is. It’s really turning the camera to what it means to make a movie.”

3. Panel Discussions

Organized again by independent curator Douglas Fogle, this year’s Sound and Vision panel series will feature discussions between Canadian photographer Jeff Wall and Academy Award-nominated film editor Kevin Tent (Nebraska;Sideways); L.A. artist Taryn Simon and pioneering photographer Stephen Shore; and provocative L.A. artist Leigh Ledare and interdisciplinary artist Frances Stark, among others.

“The mix of artists is pretty wide ranging,” says Fogle over the phone. Stark, he says, “does online digital work and film and video alongside her other practice of making drawings and paintings,” while Shore “comes from a more classical photographic background” and Simon “has a more conceptual approach to the image.” As for the pairing of Wall and Tent, Fogle explains that the idea was inspired by “directorial” nature of Wall’s photos. “Jeff was really interested in speaking with either a cinematographer, editor, or a director,” says Fogle. “Jeff’s photographs look like frozen moments from a storyline. I was excited that Kevin was available and interested. I really love his work with Alexander Payne ever since Election. Editors are very underrated in Hollywood.”

STORY: The Hollywood Reporter to Sponsor Screening of Dennis Hopper’s ‘The Last Movie’ at Paris Photo L.A. Fest

4. Gallery Shows

Of the 80 or so galleries, more than 30 will present solo shows, including photographer Uta Barth at 1301PE, Stephen Shore at 303 Gallery, works by Guy Bourdin at Louise Alexander, Mariah Robertson at M+B, Penelope Slinger at Riflemaker and Candida Höfer at Thomas Zander. “When galleries feel comfortable to bring a solo show, it’s better for the audience, because they can enter into an artist’s body of work,” says Frydman.

Peter Fetterman, who runs the prominent Peter Fetterman Gallery in Santa Monica, is showing works from iconic Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado’s new body of work, “Genesis,” alongside Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gregori Maiofis, Pentti Sammallahti and Stephen Wilkes. “Salgado communicates to a large audience,” says Fetterman. “The message of his work is very zeitgeist of what we’re all thinking about — a very environmental, humanistic message.”

303 Gallery, will be coming from New York to show a series of photographs that Shore took while following Doug Aitken’s “Station to Station” nomadic railway music festival this past summer. “My gallery brings my work to non-photo-centric art fairs like Frieze and Art Basel,” says Shore, who is known for pioneering color photography in the 1970s, “but I think that this also gets to a different audience, and Paris Photo has such a great reputation for the quality of its exhibitors.”

Also on view during the weekend will be an exhibit called “100 Years of Leica Photography,” as well as David Hockney’s BMW Art Car.

Frydman expects the whole affair to supersede last year’s fair. “I don’t want to quote a figure, because I don’t want to look bad if we don’t match that figure, but I think we’re going to do much better than last year,” he says. “Above 15 or 16 [thousand], maybe more.”

===

T MAGAZINE NYTIMES

Art Matters | An L.A. Fair Explores the Possibilities of Photography

Culture

By SU WU

April 24, 2014, 9:00 am

For proof that photography can open your world, look no further than the boundary-pushing second edition of Paris Photo Los Angeles, which runs from Friday to Sunday at Paramount Pictures Studios. Like the medium itself — which freed experience from geography and time, so that viewers no longer had to actually be there in order to see something happen — the very structure of the event is a paean to fluidity. The art fair started 17 years ago in Paris and now has an annual outpost in Los Angeles on a backlot replica of New York City. “The history of photography is made of ambiguity,” says the event’s director, Julien Frydman. “If you look at photography as a self-contained medium you lose 50 percent of it, maybe more. Photography is nourished by other forms of art and in dialogue with other forms of art.”

That dialogue is well represented at the fair. As part of its “Sound and Vision” programming, Jeff Wall, whose photographs are perhaps best known for their painterly ambition and cinematic staging, will chat with the film editor Kevin Tent, who cut “Nebraska.” Louise Alexander Gallery will present work from the personal archives of the iconic fashion photographer Guy Bourdin, who studied with Man Ray before going to work at French Vogue. At Cherry and Martin, the rising star Brian Bress’s looped video installations feature actors obscured by collaged masks. Gina Osterloh’s photographs of paper cutouts at François Ghebaly Gallery and the Bolivian artist Gaston Ugalde’s humorous meditations on nature at Salar Galería de Arte play at the edges of performance and installation. A screening of the siblings Jack and Leigh Ruby’s “Car Wash Incident,” a video reenactment based on a 1975 photograph of a New Jersey car wash, offers another intersection of still and moving images. The fair’s tribute to Dennis Hopper will include not only photographic work but also his 1971 meta-Western “The Last Movie,” rarely seen since its initial commercial failure, which Hopper compared to an Abstract Expressionist painting.

Other work on view tackles how the self-affirming truth of the photographic image can bump up against fiction. To inaugurate a new annual series focused on archival photography, called “UNEDITED!,” Frydman culled L.A.P.D. images from 1925 through the 1970s. The result reveals the narrative potential of forensic evidence. “I selected images that had this ambivalence; they were both a document and amazing, great pictures,” Frydman says. “I realized they were strong images that generated, like any art piece, a reaction, a metaphor, a critical point of view.” Ambiguities also arise in the work of Jim Krantz, whose photographs of cowboys for Marlboro ad campaigns were later appropriated by Richard Prince, and in the images in a new monograph of work by Collier Schorr, “8 Women” (MACK Books), which showcases the photographer’s repurposing of outtakes from her own commercial portraiture.

“Photography is a starting point, but it’s not about keeping categories or barriers alive. On the contrary, it seems having a specific subject helps people feel more at ease about where those barriers fall apart,” Frydman says. And if 81 exhibitors representing 18 countries — including 31 solo shows — isn’t enough visual information, there’s always one last line to cross. This is the first year of the Photo Independent Art Fair, which highlights photographers who don’t yet have gallery representation. It’s just across the street.

Paris Photo Los Angeles runs April 25 – April 27 at Paramount Pictures Studios, 5555 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles; parisphoto.com/losangeles. 

Photo Independent Art Fair runs April 25 – April 27 at Raleigh Studios, 5300 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles; photoindependent.com.

• Guy Bourdin’s photograph from Vogue Paris, 1970, will be exhibited by Louise Alexander Gallery this weekend at Paris Photo Los Angeles.
• Josef Hoflehner’s “Central Park II (New York, 2011),” 2011, exhibited by Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska, Salzburg.
• Thierry Fontaine’s “Le Fabricant de Rêve,” 2008, exhibited by Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris.
• Charlie White’s “Still Life of Meats with Taker,” 2014, exhibited by Loock Galerie, Berlin.
• Gaston Ugalde’s “Colorado X,” 2012, exhibited by Salar Galería de Arte, Bolivia.
• An L.A.P.D. photo from October 10, 1942 of two bullet holes in car window, part of the “UNEDITED!” show. LAPD, courtesy of Fototeka