Photographer Michael Dressel’s book entitled Los(t) Angeles contains striking monochrome photographs from Los Angeles. The book tries to draw attention to the harder aspect of life and the several hues in the US city. Dressel took the photographs from 2014 to 2020 for the book. It looks to deal with street photography humanistically as well as in a way that highlights the despair and irony that Angelinos often encounter outdoors.
LA is perhaps known for the bright lights and sunny weather that it has. However, it is a gray location, especially with regard to its circumstantial combination of cultures, stories and people. LA has the combination of light and dark, grit and glamor as well as success and struggles daily. We want to consider it a city with a rainbow-like energy, muddling into the gray zone almost every day, particularly recently. The city has societal issues like homelessness, mental health issues and daily political division. The work of Dressel looks at the contrasts.
Dressel loved the fact that filmmaker Federico Fellini was capable of describing people most unflatteringly and in an uncondescending way. It appeared to Dressel that Fellini laughed with the audience as he realized that he was a sad joke like everyone else. Dressel stated that he would like to be similar to that. Dressel has been living in LA city for three decades now. He has no preconceived notions about what he would like to express. However, he believes in the magic that occurs when he points his camera at people and freezes some hundredths of one second into a photograph. It is a form of magic that lets him photograph himself in the world.
Gingko Press and Hartmann Books co-published the book, which is now available at the LA section of the website of the former publisher.