Wilmington, California is a two-zip-code neighborhood, located at the southern tip of Los Angeles. Like a pendulum, it hangs at the bottom of a long, thin territorial thread (along the Harbor Freeway) that connects South Los Angeles to the city's thriving port. Hardly anyone in Southern California knows that this territorial thread exists. That is one reason why Wilmington's civic status is so often misunderstood.

Along with San Pedro, Wilmington hosts the Port of Los Angeles. This port flows seamlessly into the equally gigantic Port of Long Beach. Together they handle about forty percent of the nation's import trade. They are Big Business.

Nineteenth and early twentieth century civic pioneers confidently expected that Wilmington would develop as a west coast verson of New York City. An affluent neighborhood, dubbed the Court of Nations, was built for the area's business elite-to-be. During World War II, these dreams still seemed realistic. The region flourished as a home for armed service families, for shipyard and port workers, for fishing fleets, and for employees of port-related industries. After World War II, however, things changed dramatically. Waves of immigrants arrived in Southern California, and many of these immigrants found homes in Wilmington. Today Wilmington is a dominantly-Latino, low income comunity.

Shadows from the Port of Los Angeles fall starkly across Wilmington. Every hour of every day, lives and deaths in Wilmington are affected by the port's presence and by the presence of port-related industries. In recent years, these port shadows have become less menacing. There is change in the air--literally. For decades, Wilmington's story has been associated with pollution. Residents had been forced to breathe air that was fouled by cargo-carrying ships, trucks, trains, and refineries. They suffered high rates of cancer and asthma. They still do. But Wilmington's story is changing. The air is being cleaned up. The port is becoming a model for the application of green technology.

Wilmington is not an environmental heaven--far from it. Big problems persist. Green port technologies, for example, require cargo containers, and huge piles of these containers have been placed next to residential neighborhoods. Economic and community development projects have been few and far between.

No one can estimate the long term transformative power of green technology in Wilmington. But today's hopes for a brighter future somehow seem realistic. Wilmington seems poised to enter a new era.

The following photographic images have been selected from Port Shadows, John Orr, Blurb: 2010.