In the last decade, particularly in temperate Southern California, the presence of an ever-increasing homeless population has become undeniable fact of social life. Although estimates vary, there is a general agreement that there are tens of thousands of homeless men, women and children in the Los Angeles region. In the best tradition of documentary photography, Anthony Hernandez set out to record the hidden dwelling places of this population. He found them in vacant lots, under freeways, in scores of abandoned sections of the city that readily bring to mind the chaotic vision of Blade Runner so often evoked as a description of the city’s future. “In Hernandez’s photographs,” critic Deborah Irmas has written, “it is the way the items are drawn that makes the work so powerful: a safety stowed plastic shopping bag half-filled with food; a pair of greasy combs and an old jacket; a undulating blanket sprinkled with tree leaves; a still warm grill silvered with ash. These objects deliver the aching force the recent or distant presence of human beings, those all-too-real people we see each day in Los Angeles and from whom we instinctively turn away: the man who sits in front of the supermarket; the woman who wanders in and out of the post office. Is this where she sleeps when the post office closes? Is she the one who cooks her own food under a tree near the freeway on a grill fashioned from a shopping-cart panel?”

WORKS
32

DIMENSIONS

16 x 20 to 20 x 24 (inches)
40,64 x 50,8 to 50,8 x 60.96 (cm)

SPACE REQUIREMENTS

200 linear feet (60.96 linear meters)

INQUIRIES

exhibitions@curatorial.org
626.577.0044

FEE

$3,500