The rough charm of life in L.A.'s gaps
- Text by Biju Belinky
- Photography by Matt Martin
For Matt Martin, the only way to get a true sense of Los Angeles is to look in the gaps. Those long stretches of asphalt between each social hub, where being on foot is like being suspended in some sort of metallic wasteland, with nothing to remind you of humankind but the endless stream of cars and a few other vagrant souls.
That’s what American Xerography was looking to capture. The project began back in 2014, and it’s a portrait of the West Coast landscape that reflects the way its cities have been built: industrial and organic, grandiose, but existing almost independently to the people who inhabit it.
Matt was particularly drawn to the way that, even when lost in the middle of huge national parks, there are traces of human interference, a slight curation of the nature surrounding you. A carved-out, long, winding road among the woods, leading the explorer to a postcard scene just as it is meant to be seen and photographed – a link between the spontaneous exploration of the past, and what is here today.
That relationship between now and then is also evident in the intentional roughness of Matt’s images, making each photograph impossible to place in the timeline of technology.
With a decisively DIY aesthetic reminiscent of ’90s zines and his own past photographing street art, the photographer and curator uses an old-school photocopier as his dark room, toying with brightness and contrasts until reaching the desired look. That is then passed on to paper, each colour and texture carefully selected, each image a unique, self-contained object.
“I fell in love with LA,” he muses. “At first I hated it, but then it just grew on me more and more. One time, we were having breakfast and the waiter said that what was amazing about the area was that ‘you could surf in the morning and snowboard in the evening.’ You can stay in California and have all aspects of weather and the sea and the mountains and the forests. It’s an interesting place to start from.”
American Xerography by Matt Martin ran at Doomed Gallery on 18 May.
Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
You might like
A stark, confronting window into the global cocaine trade
Sangre Blanca — Mads Nissen’s new book is a close-up look at various stages of the drug’s journey, from production to consumption, and the violence that follows wherever it goes.
Written by: Isaac Muk
“Like skating an amphitheatre”: 50 years of the South Bank skatepark, in photos
Skate 50 — A new exhibition celebrates half a century of British skateboarding’s spiritual centre. Noah Petersons traces the Undercroft’s history and enduring presence as one of the world’s most iconic spots.
Written by: Noah Petersons
“I didn’t care if I got sacked”: Sleazenation’s Scott King in conversation with Radge’s Meg McWilliams
Radgenation — For our 20th Anniversary Issue, Huck’s editor Josh Jones sits down with the legendary art director and the founder of a new magazine from England’s northeast to talk about taking risks, crafting singular covers and disrupting the middle class dominance of the creative industries.
Written by: Josh Jones
Free-spirited, otherworldly portraits of Mexico City’s queer youth
Birds — Pieter Henket’s new collaborative photobook creates a stage for CDMX’s LGBTQ+ community to express themselves without limitations, styling themselves with wild outfits that subvert gender and tradition.
Written by: Isaac Muk
The suave style and subtle codes of gay San Francisco in the ’70s
Seminal Works — Hal Fischer’s new photobook explores the photographer’s archive, in which he documented the street fashion and culture of the city post-Gay Liberation, and pre-AIDS pandemic.
Written by: Miss Rosen
The stripped, DIY experimentalism of SHOOT zine
Zine Scene — Conceived by photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya in the ’00s, the publication’s photos injected vulnerability into gay portraiture, and provided a window into the characters of the Brooklyn arts scene. A new photobook collates work made across its seven issues.
Written by: Miss Rosen
