First Impressions

“Coming in from London from over the pole
Flying in a big airliner
Chickens flying everywhere around the plane
Could we ever feel much finer?”

                                  Lyrics by Arlo Guthrie, from Running Down the Road, 1969

For many coming of age in the seventies, Arlo’s iconic lyrics were an irresistible siren song for California. A Shangri-La by the Pacific beckoned, bookended by surfing beaches and seasonally snowy mountains. This geographic yin and yang was pinioned together by a wide open, free-flowing arterial freeway system. And the human locust swarm did answer the call and come.  From early Spanish settlers displacing native peoples and preceding Arlo by a good three hundred years, through the economic lean times of the 1930’s and post WWII boomers that led to the social revolution of the Vietnam war era, to modern day political and economic refugees that may presage a future wave of environmental refugees, they keep on coming.

Today, the beaches and seductive Mediterranean weather still backstop a LA vibe that continues to attract visitors and migrants alike. However, these are fraught times, as the daily news cycle continuously reminds us. The allure is increasingly tarnished by a rising tide of challenges - wildfires that respect no season, a legion of homeless transients amid unaffordable housing, and a transportation network seemingly teetering on the edge of gridlock and collapse.

So, I decided to visit and take a fresh photographic look at this iconic part of California. I previously spent over two decades in California, but being no longer shackled to the 9 to 5 treadmill and with time to look and linger, I found myself making new, first impressions. Some were comforting and re-affirming of the mental image of this area I thought I knew so well. Others were, frankly, jarring and uncomfortable. Reviewing the images later, I kept wondering what first impressions visitors, truely new to the area, would take home with them. One might be temped to shrug that concern off with a casual “Its their problem”, but in the modern interconnected and interdependant world, I believe this is not an inconsequential concern.

The related gallery selection includes a few images from my visit. I pulled these from the more complete story I try to tell in this book of 36 photographs. I’ve titled the collection First Impressions and further details are included in the Gallery. I hope you will acquire a copy and that the images and comments I have written will also cause you to reflect more deeply on first impressions.