ANTHONY HERNANDEZ: Phantoms and Dreams, Ghosts and Grit…

The 1970’s photographs of Anthony Hernandez possess something stupendous and straightforward and yet, a mystery is there, despairing and faint. This feeling, strange and fleeting is in many ways, hard to pin down. Of course there is the expansive aesthetic, full of details and information, gorgeous in its bleak cement and Los Angeles “ugliness”. There is the nostalgia that is evoked by these time-capsule-like scenes. And yes, there is the analog “feel” which always adds to the “magic”. But that is not all of it…

Perhaps the “something” is a bit more complex because it even varies for each viewer? Yes, this non-constant feeling is an ever changing chameleon, a shifting phantom of sorts… yes, okay, that is part of it. There are also these “ghosts”, or perhaps “the traces of ghosts” that inhabit these pictures with messages that are then embedded into the image by these anonymous faces. We look at the bus riders, the workers, the everyday folks – as they travel across the cement. Polyester wearing inhabitants going to and fro in the sun, drenched by the surrounding “ugly” smog covered sprawl. Perhaps it is also in their unimportant jobs and in their staring back. This staring that actually occurred decades ago and yet still now they look back at us, directly into our shared heads.

Also, there are the shared “memories” of the mental projections from this one and only dream-land called Los Angeles. The dirty side to LA and the anonymous traces… we can feel them right now. The remnants of ghosts and their dreams fading into the cement as they wait for their buses, as they eat their lunches, as they fish and walk, ride and then sit. Waiting and sitting.

These ghost people and the traces of their anonymous lives touching our insides, making us feel them. Perhaps then these traces themselves are what defies the putting into words? For who can write something that can’t really be written? Who has the audacity or the balls to try to do justice to these ghost faces and dead LA traces and places. Bukowski perhaps? But not I, not you. Let’s then say that these ghost vibes, these long-past-LA stories within the image are too complex to be put into adequate words… stupendous and mysterious.

Phantoms and their ghosts dreams then… grit and ghosts.

So then there we are… the magic of time that has stopped still, waiting three decades to come to you right now, for you, this very minute. Most of them are all dead in the dirt… but yet, these folks exist. They are no longer here, only ash, dust in the ground… but these places, here for you now, you feel them. Remember them, soak up the detail… let yourself dream of Los Angeles, of cement and colorless ghosts…

Anthony Hernandez… bless you sir and these fine treasures that you made. And to you Loosestrife Editions for putting them into an object to touch and to hold.

Regards,

Doug Rickard

Waiting, Sitting, Fishing and Some Automobiles.
Photographs by Anthony Hernandez. Essay by Gerry Badger.
Loosestrife Editions, Tucson, 2007. 264 pp., 42 duotone plates in gatefold, opening to 13” x 19”., 13¼x11¾”.