home page.. ...oil city.. ...waiting at rancho...... mannequins.......metro intersections ....port shadows

I was born and raised in the Los Angeles metropolitan area--a fact, I've been told, that makes me unique. Most of my fellow residents came from somewhere else: first, from the American midwest, and then from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and just about every other place in the world.

After going to graduate school in the East, and after teaching at Texas A&M University for three years, I joined the faculty as a professor of social ethics at the University of Southern California. Thus, I consciously ratified what nature bestowed. I became an enthusiastic citizen of the Southland. My wife and I raised our family here. Our sons and their families live here. This is our spot in the world.

One thing I know for certain.  I am strongly attached to the Los Angeles metropolitan area,  where most of my photographic images have been captured.  I am not attached because LA is a paradise. It is not. Rather, I am attached because LA seems always to be in the process of remaking itself. It is a place where people are given permission to express meaning in their lives through bizarre forms. It is a place where demographic change has been breathtaking, but where rules of engagement for multiethnic living are often engagingly relaxed.  It is a place where people regularly confront brutality on the streets, then--often only a few steps away--experience tenderness and generosity. It is a place where extremes of economic inequality are  frustratingly present. 

LA.'s civic future is everywhere a matter for debate and anxiety. That is why being a photographer here can be both perplexing and exhilarating.