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California

Capturing the punks and poets of ’70s California

Breaking backstage — Throughout the decade, photographer Michael Jang made fake press passes to get access to gigs, conventions and Hollywood events.

  • Photography
  • Miss Rosen

California fires: what it’s like to lose your home to flames

Malibu burning — The Woolsey Fire started on November 8, 2018. It would go on to destroy over 1600 structures – including Jamie Brisick’s home. Two months later, he reflects on the blaze that engulfed his beloved Point Dume, in Malibu.

  • Reportage
  • Jamie Brisick

The mysterious LA religion working to stop the apocalypse

The Aetherius Society — Since it was founded in the 1950s, the Aetherius Society has claimed to be responsible for preventing some of the world’s most deadly catastrophes. Writer Frank Martin spends two months at the secretive organisation’s LA branch to learn how they do it.

  • Activism
  • Frank Martin

Ed Templeton on Larry Clark's renegade style of photography

Kindred spirits — There is a lineage of photographers who shoot to shock, planting themselves in fringe-dwelling scenes with the eye of a lustful voyeur. Larry Clark was never one of them. His photographs of wayward teens bingeing on sex and drugs, and leaving 1960s America aghast, are moments that he lived. It’s in this brutal suburbia, in the faces of strung-out kids, that skateboarder Ed Templeton first realised that his own life could be a muse.

  • Magazine
  • Ed Templeton

Capturing West Coast skaters, the Victorian way

Stay very still — For the past seven years, Berkeley-based Jenny Sampson has been capturing the skaters of California using tintype – a century-and-a-half old photographic process.

  • Photography
  • Biju Belinky

The Travel Diary: The enduring beauty of America’s national parks

What you see along the way — Photographer Heather McCutcheon travels across the USA for her latest photo project, capturing the country’s most breathtaking natural wonders.

  • Travel
  • Heather McCutcheon

Inside California’s all-women cannabis retreats

Ganja goddess getaways — Offering classes in yoga, painting and belly-dancing, the Ganja Goddess Getaway is a weekend haven for all female-identifying cannabis enthusiasts. We talk to Deidra, the company founder, to find out more.

  • Reportage
  • Dominique Sisley

Behind the scenes at America’s new legal cannabis farms

The pot farmer’s daughter — As the daughter of a pot farmer, Kristen Angelo grew up around the plant. Now, she’s using photography to eradicate the stigma, and encourage what she believes to be a major grassroots social and political movement.

  • Photography
  • Ellie Howard

These rural right-wingers are trying to create their own state

Welcome to ‘Jefferson’ — Roused by Brexit and the rise of Trump, these Northern Californians are attempting to break away from their liberal homeland and do things their own way.

  • Reportage
  • Elijah Hurwitz

When a hippie oasis becomes an industrial nightmare

An American dream, cracked — Photographer Lars Borges spent two years documenting California's youngest and poorest county: a once-thriving border town now home to industrial sweatshops and strip bars.

  • Culture
  • Cian Traynor

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