For generations, countless artists have traveled westward across America to take part in a voyage symbolic of a better life and a fresh start. By following the western expansion of the country, those who embark on this trip become an embodiment for the American dream. Lured by the opportunity of the Golden State in a way that is almost as biblical as the promised land, the promises of Los Angeles appear virtually mythical to most. The city is bright and sprawling, filled with marriages of the contemporary and antiquated. Los Angeles, in all of its contradictions, exists in a way that refuses definition.
My work, Due West, joins the conversation that has been ongoing between photographers throughout America’s history, in an attempt to define what it means for a city to exist that seemingly refutes itself. The landscape of Southern California becomes subverted within my photographs, transforming the recognizable and frequently represented city into an alien landscape. The Los Angeles that exists in Due West is an unlikely combination of glamour and fracture, which in turn highlights the uneasiness of the city.
Los Angeles’ bright, flat and sprawling landscape is the antithesis of my New England home. And it is certainly a place of polarizing extremes within itself– physically, visually, and socioeconomically. These extremes make Los Angeles feel like an impossible city. Arriving as an outsider heightened these differences, which compelled me to emphasize my perspective: Los Angeles is a subject that has been illuminated by its own existence.
-Alexa Cushing, Due West