Perpignan – A resident of Venice, Los Angeles, for the past 15 years, US photographer Karen Ballard has documented the transformation of the Californian coastal town from holiday resort to artistic hub and, increasingly, a site of homelessness. She tells RFI about the resulting images, recently shown in France.
Award-winning photojournalist and film stills photographer Ballard moved to Venice, a beachside neighbourhood of LA, in 2009.
Millions of people visit the resort town every year, making it southern California’s second most popular tourist attraction after Disneyland. Yet the famed boardwalk also hosts a growing homeless population.
Featured at this year's Visa pour l'Image photojournalism festival in Perpignan, southern France, Ballard's series "Venice, California" captures what the curators call "a place where beauty, surf, wealth, and the harsh realities of 21st-century America exist side by side".
RFI: What was the idea behind your photo series on Venice?
Karen Ballard: Venice is kind of a microcosm of Los Angeles in the sense that Los Angeles is still struggling with a big homeless population. And yet it's also the land of Hollywood, and it's the land of Beverly Hills, and it's the land of Rodeo Drive.
And so what you see now in Venice is a bit of that influx. There's a wealthy side to Venice now, but there's also this homeless side. And that's kind of the dichotomy of my project.
"There's a wealthy side to Venice now, but there's also this homeless side. And that's kind of the dichotomy of my project."
Photographer Karen Ballard
RFI: When did you start this project?
KB: I started it right when I moved there at the end of 2009.
I think there's one picture from that first month or two I was there. There's a picture from a café called "A view from the Sidewalk Café", and there's a man rollerskating in the background who's an icon of Venice, Harry Perry. He's been around forever. He used to be on television... That picture, I think, goes back to that very first beginning.
I'm still shooting. I live in Venice, so I'm still working on it, but it was always a long-term project. It was always intended to be a book project, and I just worked on it in between my other assignments. I would work on it sometimes very intensely, and then maybe not work on it for a while.
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RFI: What’s so special for you about Venice?
KB: Well, certainly if you're a lover of the beach, it's an incredible beach because it's not the most glamorous, but it's a public beach for all. You really have all walks of life. People from all over the world, you and then the locals, the surf, the sun, the light.
For me, it's always been about the light there. I love it so much. You could say that for a lot of California, but it's not just about the golden hour. We have a marine layer that comes in and Venice gets its own special blue, a blue-grey light. You can see that in some of the images too. It's kind of one or the other. I really like that.
But also Venice is very carefree, this is the land of The Doors. This is a land where the Red Hot Chili Peppers came out of… This is the land of some of the great LA artists like Ed Rusha and John Baldessari and even going back, it's the birthplace of silent films. Charlie Chaplin made his movies there.
So it has an artistic history and heritage that drew me to it, that's for sure.
RFI: There's one photo in your series with two men, one is meditating and the other has an umbrella. Can you describe what's going on?
KB: They're sunbathing, but they're also posing. They're just like: "Look at me, look at me." You know, these posers. That's what I like about it.
That picture kind of represents a little bit about what the Venice experience is about. You go to Venice Beach to look at people. It's a place to see and be seen, but also to observe the human experience.
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