Tabletop Los Angeles and Remnants of Ancient L.A. 1983-84

After completing the California Dwelling project I started thinking about different approaches to photographing the urban streetscape. Without anything particular in mind, I began collecting vintage postcards of Los Angeles landmarks. The buildings still existed but their surroundings had changed over time. I found myself drawn to this vanished black and white world and the feeling of loss it evoked.

I wanted to explore the same dynamic but without nostalgia—to create imagery of locations that might look real at first glance but couldn’t be visited or entered, only experienced in a photograph.

I began building scale model urban fragments from scratch, playing with the details and lighting to see if I could convey a sense of place in an area the size of a tabletop. I was amazed at how convincing some of images were. It raised all sorts of issues about photographic believability in the pre-Photoshop era, while giving me the freedom to create entirely false worlds.

Sets were destroyed after they were photographed so that only the images remain. A few production shots are included as proof that these are imagined places, made by hand and photographed.