Descent 1988

I live in Pasadena along the northern rim of Los Angeles. The drive into L.A. can feel like a slow descent, a coiling freeway ride from the foothills down into a vast concrete basin. In spite of the insulating effect of a car, you can sense the swelling chaos at the city’s urban core.

One day I saw a fragment of graffiti that read “L.A. Chinadoll Dreamer.” It stuck with me. I imagined a traveller by that name, marking and defending their turf while exploring this big untamed city.

Inspired by the locations described in Dante’s Divine Comedy and my attraction to L.A.’s noir potential, I built and photographed a series of tabletop sets to create a fictional stage for their journey.

As fate would have it, years later I found myself in a Los Angeles courtroom serving on the jury of fatal drive-by shooting case, piercing the curtain between an imagined underworld and a real one.

Pick-Up