ZZYZX - 1st ed., 3rd printing

Item Details

London, MACK, 2016, Hardcover

VERY GOOD ++

London, MACK, 2016. Photographs were made in and around Los Angeles between 2008 and 2015. No text, only photographs.

Mack presents a fourth edition of Gregory Halpern’s seminal 2016 monograph, “ZZYZX,”  a captivating visual ode to the city of Los Angeles.

The early settlers dubbed California ‘The Golden State’ and ‘The Land of Milk and Honey’. Today there are the obvious ironies – sprawl, spaghetti junctions and skid row – but the place is not so easily distilled or visualised, either as a clichéd paradise or as its demise. There’s a strange kind of harmony when it’s all seen together – the sublime, the psychedelic, the self-destructive. Like all places, it’s unpredictable and contradictory, but to greater extremes. Cultures and histories coexist, the beautiful sits next to the ugly, the redemptive next to the despairing, and all under a strange and singular light, as transcendent as it is harsh.

The pictures in this book begin in the desert east of Los Angeles and move west through the city, ending at the Pacific. This general westward movement alludes to a thirst for water, as well as the original expansion of America, which was born in the East and which hungrily drove itself West until reaching the Pacific, thereby fulfilling its ‘manifest’ destiny.

The people, places, and animals in the book did exist before Halpern’s camera, but he has sewn these photographs into a work of fiction or fantasy – a structure, sequence, and edit which, like Los Angeles itself, teeters on the brink of collapsing under the weight of its own strangely-shaped mass.

(MACK)

One of today’s most creative documentarians, Buffalo, NY-born Halpern, a Magnum associate, creates thought-provoking output that poetically explores the complexities of contemporary American identity.

Originally released in 2016, “ZZYZX,” which won Photobook of the Year at the 2016 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation Photobook Award, stands as his most iconic work, a masterful piece of storytelling that demonstrates the artistry for which he is renowned.

Halpern was drawn to the ‘beautiful haziness’ of the light in Los Angeles, caused by heavy pollution (the city consistently ranks as having the worst air quality in the US). It’s an interesting dichotomy: something beautiful yet toxic, perhaps a metaphor for Los Angeles itself—a city filled with hope and opportunity but one that often ‘chews up’ and ‘spits out’ so many who make the pilgrimage in search of their destiny, leaving them by the wayside.

A number of the images in the book portray the city’s marginalized. Yet Halpern avoids cliches or simplistic narratives. Halpern approaches subjects without imposing a narrative or evoking pity, allowing viewers to draw their own interpretations. Similarly, the landscapes and secluded corners often appear desolate and parched, with images of fires and their aftermath amplifying the sense foreboding.

Yet, amidst this, Halpern’s adept use of composition and light renders each image undeniably beautiful, presenting a paradox that mirrors the complexity of the city itself.

Although rooted in visual storytelling, Halpern describes his work as inhabiting a realm between documentary and a certain enigmatic quality, allowing the viewer’s imagination to roam freely. “ZZYZX” transcends mere transcription; it is as much a creation of fiction as it is of fantasy. The images depict real people and places, but seen through his lens and woven together they become something strange and somewhat surreal, a kind of Lynchian portrait of a place embedded in our collective cultural psyche.

(The Independant Photographer)