The 1970’s photographs of Anthony Hernandez possess something stupendous, something despairing and faint... lusciously strange… something that is fleeting, or maybe some would say… “hard to pin down”.

Of course the aesthetic is godsmackingly gorgeous in its bleak ugliness… the nostalgia is obviously there… fantastic analog flaws are always appealing. But that is not it. Perhaps the "something" is too complex, a feeling that can’t be described because it varies for each viewer, for each individual – hence the feeling is not constant but an ever changing chameleon, a phantom… yes, that is part of it. And... perhaps it is a ghost, or perhaps the traces of ghosts, the feelings that the bell bottom, hispanic fishin', sideburn bus riding, black cement troddin, everyday faceless livin, polyester wearin’ folks left when they went to and fro in the sun drenched, stark, smoggy sprawl. Perhaps it is their unimportant jobs and the traces of blank faces that existed decades ago and yet still exist in the shared heads and the far away memories, the speculations, and the shared legends of the one and only palm tree dreamland… but the traces, we can still feel them right now, even as you read my words… they are the remnants of unimportant ghosts, they are here on our screen, and then they go from there out, into you.

Ghost people, ghost cars, ghost buses, traces of their nothing lives touching your insides, making you feel, making you feel them and their normal things… their empty scenes, vacant to stare at, empty to soak into your head, yours… and theirs, them dead, you sitting here, still feeling them and their dead, long gone places. Perhaps these traces can’t be put into words… who can write something that can’t be written, who has the audacity, the balls to try to do justice to these ghost faces, these dead LA traces and places. Let’s say that at minimum, these ghost vibes, these human-LA-longgone-stories are too complex to be put into adequate words... words that would pin them down… words from the down deep, pinned to your head… they can’t be, they are too fleeting, they are not real… phantom words and the ghosts are not here, this is just paper or pixels on a screen… phantoms that are long gone, not real – only a dream of what once was… but wait, maybe more… no, not more… no more. Phantoms and dreams baby, grit and ghosts.







To try and describe this magic, the magic of the lost places and the lost faces, the empty cement open spaces… the waiting, the sitting, the coming and the going. To try and describe this will certainly leave one coming up lacking – coming up short… it is the traces, these ghost traces that make these Anthony Hernandez pictures an enigma… an enigma that whispers with cement, and talks to you in Ghost Grit. It is the magic of time that stopped still and then waited three decades to come to you right now, for you, this very minute. They waited all this time, dead in the dirt… but now, these folks exist… no longer here, only ashe, dust in the ground… but these places, here for you now, they exist and you feel them. Remember them, soak up every detail… let yourself dream this human ghostly grit of a Los Angeles dream… cement and colorless ghosts, remembrances of what left us long ago… here again, to visit you, paper and pixel… ghosts from 1970’s Los Angeles… in their memories, and in your dreams.

Anthony Hernandez… bless you sir and this fine treasure that you left.

Regards,

Doug Rickard





ASX CHANNEL: Anthony Hernandez

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