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Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Date Uploaded: Apr 29, 2015

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Comments: 13
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 05/21/2015 05:04:23 AM
I like this, probably because, as with Paul's essay, it is culturally representative. An assumption from someone who has experienced neither place physically, but I can see the presence of a universal theme. The veneer of environment on the human condition peeled back. Not unlike an archaeological dig, all dust and rocks, the facade to the human condition. One could go to either place, and hidden behind all that sparseness, one would find the whole gauntlet of human nature, the good, the bad, glory and despair. You and Paul are unpacking your environment, that irresistible urge to pick at it, poke it with a stick, turn over the rock, reflecting the same attributes within yourselves that you are exploring outside yourselves. Just a hunch. Thank you for sharing.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/19/2015 03:24:34 PM
I always find these sort of vernacular, typologies fascinating...and I'm not sure why. Or maybe fascination is wrong? Curious works. They make me curious. Does "fascination" convey "delight"? I don't know. Of course these images don't conjure delight in any sort of way, yet I don't find them depressing. They, as in the situations depicted, aren't happy either, they're just there. We pass them in a our cars with looks on our faces, secretly hoping we'll never have to know such ways of life. I have this sort of thing all around me. I can walk down the road not half a mile and take a picture of something just as bad, but instead of settings of barren dried earth it's lush green-ness and out of control vines that try to cover what shouldn't be put out there for all to see...Eden gone bad. Decadence and squalor always seem to occupy close quarters. I think it's the way of the world. It all still leaves me wondering though...what happened? What was that precise point of no return? Why is there so much garbage and why does no one pick it up?

  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/16/2015 10:41:45 AM
Originally posted by mariuca:
Marla, I do not understand your reaction to your own essay. Are you unhappy because you made an excellent documentary about a depressing place? Do photo essays need to be only happy and uplifting? Is not what you showed is a part of life?
Looking forward to your next essay.


Thank you Mariuca for the comment. I am not unhappy with my essay. I think I captured what I saw accurately. Both your and Paul's essays crystallized my feelings towards my own essay as depicting a very empty depressing part of the world.
 05/14/2015 12:28:23 PM
The fleeting/moving bits in each image gives it an extra dimension, enriching it.

  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/11/2015 08:55:54 AM
Marla, I do not understand your reaction to your own essay. Are you unhappy because you made an excellent documentary about a depressing place? Do photo essays need to be only happy and uplifting? Is not what you showed is a part of life?
Looking forward to your next essay.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/04/2015 07:14:55 PM
Originally posted by ubique:
Yours is the more ambitious - the more profound - of the two essays for that reason.

ETA: yours is better also because it works as well, perhaps better, without words. Mine does not. So I bow before you a second time.


I'm flattered but I couldn't agree less. Any comparisons would leave me with the short straw. Your comments are very kind.

Paul, It is interesting that we had similar appearing essays and in a style neither of us usually tries. After seeing yours and Mauriuca's I had a stronger sense of how really depressing mine is. I couldn't even stand to stop the car to get out and take the pictures. California is one of the richest states in one of the richest countries and the scenes in my essay are more empty and depressing than the similar scenes in Africa and Mexico. Sadly, I could have taken 100's of similar photographs within a 50 mile radius. The whole area looks like this.

Message edited by author 2015-05-05 11:49:30.
 05/04/2015 06:45:58 PM
on a trip in a car, tooling along, not driving my head next the open window. i'm half seeing, images flash by. memory conjures up pictures of africa, Paul's, where there seemed to be people just out of frame. tidy well kept properties.
but here there is no one, maybe someone left behind, like a memory best forgotten.

thanks Marla
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/03/2015 06:45:39 AM
Oh, I've seen some of this "sunny California" - I was perhaps too young whe I saw Hollywood and these parts that you prsented to us, and I got scared. The weather was balmy with sometimes bad gusts of wind and deep cracks in the ground and I did not want to look closely of fear to find sun washed bones....
Someone has to show these places and you did it beautifully and economically in your sadness. Excellent.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 04/30/2015 10:23:06 PM
Marla, sobering images with the current drought in California. This isn’t the California dream that so many seek. Steinbeck’s novel “The Grapes of Wrath” comes to mind. A landscape we barely notice as we arrow down the road.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 04/30/2015 08:04:37 PM
same palette as Paul's essay, but without the cosmetic surgery. The focus is on the middle ground, which is empty. This is an essay on emptiness, the antimatter of California.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 04/30/2015 04:12:31 PM
Paul and you will have to explain this co-incidence to the Headmaster, I think.

You must be the expert on drive-by shooting, as the images are all beautifully linked in their framing, tone and subject matter.

Thanks.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 04/30/2015 12:56:35 PM
Ha! We did almost the same thing, in almost the same way. Both eschewed our usual moody and uncertain B&W for more offhand conventional snaps, and both for the same reason. I enjoyed your essay for the same reasons that Sarah did: it's unexpected, and rubs against the grain of the popular conception of the location and society. Yours is the more ambitious - the more profound - of the two essays for that reason. It's awfully beautiful, and beautifully awful. Thank you.

ETA: yours is better also because it works as well, perhaps better, without words. Mine does not. So I bow before you a second time.

Message edited by author 2015-04-30 13:03:15.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 04/30/2015 12:30:53 PM
I just scrolled through ubique's essay and haven't yet commented. Came to yours and found myself doing a double take. For me there are, at first glance, similarities between your essay and Paul's and yet, both are entirely unique.

Somehow, Paul's is less surprising than yours to me at least. We are so used to seeing the Hollywood California that somehow this disturbs the status quo. I enjoyed looking these images a lot and the find myself with lots of open questions. That's always a good thing in my opinion.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to see the Other California.
  Photographer found comment helpful.


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