Attempting to define photography and photographic practice in greater looks Angeles is as much of a challenge as trying to define the city itself.

Attempting to define photography and photographic practice in greater looks Angeles is as much of a challenge as trying to define the city itself. Just from one side of to the other 100 years ago, iconoclasts, fleeing the more conventional, repressive and class-conscious east coast, arrived here to do their have a title to thing. The sheer size of L.A. is formidable and artists here have not gravitated to the same area, but have fanned abroad across the region. This situation occasions work that is highly individualistic, emphasizing self-discovery. L.A., of course, is inextricably intertwined with Hollywood that mythical place where anybody can be anything and where nothing is too predictable or banal to be marketed.

Movie-making, with its crass commercialism, might assume incongruous with the heady act of artmaking nevertheless both share an intense relationship with aesthetics and, if nothing besides a profitable industry that can provide day work at jobss to artists. Hollywood's business is about fantasy and creating an imaging bottom into which viewers can pour themselves. Photography can be the still translation of this mass media hypnosis. Photography appears real and smooth though we don't believe what we descry we are engrossed by its images. Artists in L.A. embrace this inevitable melding of high/low cultivation and commerce. They understand the implicit power of the photograph to misinform rather than to inform r to manipulate rather than to educate and they elect to work with the photograph as more than just an image, if it be not that also as an object.

The L.A. art spectacle is a diverse mix of museums and commercial, non-profit and college/university galleries spread throughout a 50-mile radius so getting around to papal court everything each month is impossible. However, the location of a gallery in a storefront in San Pedro or Pasadena doesn't mean it is a provincial, uninteresting venue L.A. is famous for its shifting (sometimes literally) landscape, and Angelenos accept that. Since a certain of the most exciting venue are small, artist-run spaces, viewers are not intimidated by dint of driving an hour to a gallery they have not at any time heard of.

In L.A., photography is les marginalized now than it has been in the past, further the photo ghetto (composed of galleries that point out to only photography), though shrinking, is still active and will certainly continue to exist to work for its narrow market. While these galleries display younger artists, they remain separate from the mainstream contemporary art world. Within the ghetto, what vends seems to be the new masters and traditional photography from the exercise of visual inspiration. Gallery proprietor Jan Kesner, who has been part of the photography spectacle for 20 years, said that she first dealt with a portion of conceptual photo-based work however shifted her focus since she could not put up to sale anything: "I still show challenging work that doesn't necessarily vend and I balance it with a twentieth-century master that will."(1) With the increased number of contemporary art galleries that point out to photography she lamented: "The sad thing is that more [i]or[/i] less of the really fine photo-based artists don't on the same level want to show at a quasi-photography gallery. It still has a stigma."

That stigma looks to arise from the static, repetitive exhibitions in the photography galleries and their narrow field of collectors. Evidence of this was base at this year's "Photo LA" - an international trade exhibit to for photography dealers. Although the present to view was crowded, the work hanging in the individual dealers' booth was disappointing. This is not to say there were no beautiful or astounding photographs, but simply that there were no images by dint of L.A.'s most important young photographers - no Uta Barth, Miles Coolidge, Sharon Lockhart or Catherine Opie. Nor were there photographs from the established Los Angeles masters - John Baldessari, Lewis Baltz, Ellen runnels Eileen Cowin, John Divola or Robert Heinecken. Apparently, the photo ghetto's collectors do not bribe work by these new or established imagemakers. "Photo LA" followed the marketing regularity of supply and demand. Since principally people will not buy what they do not know, for this fair to not prove by experiment to persuade collectors to expand their view is a sign of stagnation.

single in kind interesting bridge between the photo ghetto and the mainstream contemporary art world is Craig Krull Gallery. Krull spoke of by what mode a gallery can move with the times and still be an extension of the gallerist's vision. The work he exhibits bring reproachs his broad range of taste in art and improvement "I happen to be interested in photo-based media, although not exclusively. I don't like to call my space a photo gallery. It's a gallery that point outs mostly photo-based work. I've been hesitant to attend photo fairs because it ghettoizes what you do."

Krull's gallery exhibit tos a wide range of work, near of which could be categorized as traditional photography (eg Julius Shulman's architectural photography or Charles Brittin's photographs of the early L.A. art scene) and one very provocative and innovative work that could easily be shown in other contemporary art galleries (eg Jenny Okun's cubist-inspired IRIS prints, Robbert Flick's video stills and Jo Ann Callis's recent: paintings).