My Love Letter to Los Angeles
“I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”
—Andy Warhol
Let the Good Times Roll: Overshadowed by the film and television industries, Hollywood also ranks among the top music capitals. Photograph by J Heroun
L.A. bashing is fundamental to New Yorkers and other East Coast elites. Epithets like La La land and Hollyweird are tossed off with the certitude that intellectual life could not exist anywhere but Manhattan. They have movies, but we have Broadway! The underlying assertion is that Los Angeles, with its beauty obsession, is superficial and therefore unworthy of admiration. This ignores the fact that the great urban centers of history like Alexandria, Athens, Rome, and Florence—also blessed with magnificent geography—were earlier iterations of what makes Los Angeles unequivocally the most influential metropolis in the world today.
Reason #1 is that America’s most important export and assertion of soft power around the globe is its culture. And the film and television industries are the beating heart of American culture, reverberating through every corner of the earth. It fuses storytelling, art, fashion, music, drama, and leading-edge technology, delivered by immensely skilled people behind, as well as in front of the lens.
Sexy temptress Los Angeles lustily embraces its hedonism while it draws inspiration from Latin America, Asia, and beyond from its glorious Pacific rim vantage point. Its irrepressible optimism has attracted creative, ambitious thinkers and doers since the transcontinental railroad reached the Pacific in 1876. It remains a place where anything is possible, and imaginations are set ablaze. Could the mind-bending splendor of the classic Disney animations or the brilliance of Pixar have emerged from anywhere else? Not likely.
L.A. Puts the Lust in Wanderlust: One of life’s great pleasures is cruising the Pacific Coast Highway in an icon of unabashed American swagger, like the city itself. Photograph by J Heroun
L.A. is home not only to world-renowned universities, but specialized schools like the famous Art Center College of Design. Its highly sought-after graduates fill the ranks of SoCal design studios from the world’s leading automakers. In the Mecca of car culture, automotive design is appreciated as high art. Superficial, perhaps. Magnificent? Absolutely.
In the words of the late culture vulture and Hollywood homie, Eve Babitz, “The ideas you have about cities that you’ve always known don’t work in L.A., and once you toss those aside you’ll be much better off.”
The book that best captures the city’s spirit from Hollywood’s halcyon days up to Straight Outta Compton, Taschen’s Los Angeles, Portrait of a City, is a big, wet kiss to this marvelous metropolis. This vast tome of extraordinary images tell the story of the desert flower, a must-have for anyone with an affinity for this fascinating, beguiling city.
“I’ve called Los Angeles home for more than four decades, and still I manage to discover more of it every time I open this book.”
—Arnold Schwarzenegger
As an art director and photographer, it’s my favorite place to shoot. It has everything: From dramatic natural beauty to Art Deco and modernist gems, all caressed in gorgeous light most days of the year. Best of all, there’s the majestic Pacific Ocean. A recent blog post by Redfin, the real estate authority, expands on this sentiment (and includes a quote from me on my favorite spot at the top of the article):
“The City of Angels,” Los Angeles is a photographers playground filled with many iconic sites, beautiful scenery, and amazing sunsets. Sprawling over 500 square miles, there is no shortage of photography spots to check out while in the city. Whether you are a local renting an apartment in West Hollywood, a tourist just visiting for the week, or you’re simply interested in learning more about what it’s like to live in Los Angeles because you’re thinking about moving here, this article is for you. Redfin reached out to local photographers, including me, to give you the best photography spots that you need to check out. From the Santa Monica Pier to Griffith Observatory, read Moving to the City of Angels? Check Out These Unique Places to Take Pictures in Los Angeles to see what we had to say.
—J Heroun
La La Land: Excerpts from Los Angeles, Portrait of a City, published by Taschen.
