Coming on to LA (in Twelve Songs)
13 1/2 minutes 2023 Digital Video - A film shot primarily at LAX and a bus ride from the airport to downtown Los Angeles. According to the French sociologist Marc Augé airports are “non-places” but there might be more here than meets the eye. With so many people in transit and so many families suffering under stress, making last minute calls, going or leaving home, there is bound to be a human element that defies any category. The soundtrack is composed of twelve songs by LA based composers/artists/musicians whose names and geographical setting within Los Angeles is listed at the end.
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On the Road in Post- Revolutionary Mexico with Edward Weston and Tina Modotti
On the Road in Post-Revolutionary Mexico with Edward Weston and Tina Modotti is both a dual biography and a critical study of their photography. While the book concentrates on their time period in Mexico during the 1920's it also covers their time in San Francisco and Los Angeles before they set off to join the Mexican Renaissance. The book also traces their time after their Mexican period when Weston returned to California and Modotti moved on to Europe in her anti-fascist crusade, during WWII, that would consume the rest of her short life.
The book puts their work into the context of the 1920's with chapters on the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican Renaissance, and the photographic world in Europe in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The book is illustrated with with some of their work before 1930 but is primarily text that fully describes their lives and their work as they intersected in one of the most intersecting times and places in the 20th century, with a cast of characters that range from Diego Rivera to Frida Kahlo and Anita Brenner to Sergei Eisenstein. Nevertheless the main focus is on on "Edward and Tina" as they were known to their Mexico City friends - a kind of American version of "Diego and Frida." This book is the story of their lives and their photography.
