Not enough

Today I started my project on the border of Los Angeles County, photographing between the ocean and the 101. I’ve spent a lot of time poring over the Thomas Guide the past couple of weeks, looking at roads, planning routes. (I did the same thing before I moved to L.A. in 2001, but then I was practically trying to memorize all the roads between the LAX office of Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Studio City, where I had an appointment to look at an apartment on Laurel Canyon just off Ventura.)

A few days ago, the map in my lap, I was naïvely thinking that I could finish this project in five or six months. Ha! Yeah, sure, I covered a decent span in a few hours, but I’m already thinking about things that I missed in that relatively small stretch, places I need to return to, things I need to improve on. I’m happy with one or two of my photographs, but that’s it. Now that I’ve gone out there and seen a bit of it, I have a slightly better sense of what I want to find.

I’ve read Alec Soth in interviews (like this one) talking about the imaginary museum in his basement, how he tells his students to think of what they’d want on the walls of their own imaginary museums, and that they need to go out and make those photographs. I don’t think I fully understood what he meant until I got home today, downloaded my photos, and said, “Oh, but what about that one—I don’t see one of that.” I’ve quickly realized that this is not about traveling the perimeter of the county once, and calling it a project. It’s about returning again and again, getting a better sense each time of what’s there and what I’m looking for, finding those things I want to see on my imaginary museum wall. And going back until I’m satisfied that I have enough.

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball