
Anthony Hernandez
Distributed Art Publishers
Published on 10. November 2016
Book
Hardback
280 pages
978-1-942884-01-9 (ISBN)
Description
Since the early 1970s, when he hit the streets of Los Angeles with a 35mm camera and the basic technical knowledge he had acquired in darkroom classes at East Los Angeles College, photographer Anthony Hernandez has consistently challenged himself by adopting new formats and subject matter. Moving from black-and-white to colour, from 35mm to large-format cameras and from the human figure to landscapes to abstracted detail, Hernandez has produced a varied body of work united by its arresting formal beauty and subtle engagement with social issues. At first largely unaware of the formal traditions of the medium, Hernandez developed a style of street photography uniquely attuned to the desolate beauty and sprawling expanses of L.A. Published to accompany the photographer's first retrospective, Anthony Hernandez offers a comprehensive introduction to Hernandez's career of more than forty years, including many photographs that have never before been exhibited or published. The catalogue fully represents the range and breadth of Hernandez's work, with an extensive plate section sequenced in collaboration with the photographer.
Reviews / Votes
Hernandez catalogues the avenues and intersections that make Los Angeles a city, and not only a web of connections between the area's freeways and suburban sprawl. -- Jennifer Piejko * Frieze * The hefty catalog traces the artist's journey over five decades-evocative street photography, desolate Los Angeles cityscapes, color candids, still lifes featuring artifacts of indigents-all joined by Hernandez's social conscience and compositional grace. -- Jack Crager * American Photo * Hernandez can be as effectively succinct with words as he can with visual language. It's a book to savor. -- Anne Wilkes Tucker * Photo-Eye Blog, Best of 2016 * ...a native Angeleno who records his native city (and a few other places along the way) with an unsparing but transcendent eye...Hernandez is a major artist who belatedly just had his first retrospective, and its accompanying monograph...provides a gripping narrative. -- Luc Sante * The New York Times * As a native of Los Angeles, Anthony Hernandez's rigorous and tough photographs have examined the social and political landscape of the city for over forty years, teasing apart assumptions and forcing us to look at places we'd rather drive past and ignore...From his early street photography to his current work on the aftermath of the housing crisis in California, his eponymous monograph is an incredible collection that allows us to measure the full breadth of his remarkable achievement. -- Adam Bell * Photo-Eye Blog * Whether you think of California as a promised land or a dead end, it's always been a reliable source of inspiration for photographers, and some of my favorite new books explore the terrain from unexpected angles. The most substantial of these is Anthony Hernandez. -- Vince Aletti * Photograph Magazine * Instead of focusing on the effect of development on the natural world, [Hernandez] portrays the human toll... His compositional style can make a cinder-block squat seem as monumental as a marble mausoleum. -- Arthur Lubow * The New York Times * Hernandez is constantly exploring new forms and subject matters... Such a wide-spanning body of work is what makes Hernandez's new show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and its accompanying monograph, so exciting. -- Emily Manning * i-D Magazine * In the photographs of Anthony Hernandez, there are no swaying palm trees or cinematic sunsets. Instead, for half a century, this born-and-bred Angeleno has trained his unblinking lens on another L.A. - a city of the aged, of the working class, of the destitute. -- Carolina A. Miranda * LA Times * Anthony Hernandez might be to Los Angeles what Eugene Atget is to Paris. -- Michael Ned Holte * Artforum * Anthony Hernandez captured the essence of many cities . . . but his hometown, Los Angeles and the areas inhabited by the working class, the homeless, and the poor have been the most captivating subject for his craft. * Blouin Art Info * Anthony Hernandez's time has finally come. -- Stephen Heller * Time Out San Francisco * The unidealized Los Angeles. The real L.A..... That incredible quality of light. -- Erin O'Toole * San Franciso Museum of Modern Art * An empathetic, original view of what life is like on the streets. -- Jonathan Blaustein * The New York Times *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
Illustrated in colour and duotone throughout
Dimensions
Height: 280 mm
Width: 258 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
2168 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-942884-01-9 (9781942884019)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
The child of Mexican immigrants, Anthony Hernandez (born 1947) grew up in a Los Angeles far removed from the idealized Hollywood image of the city. Hernandez's world - the world his photographs capture - was punctuated by bus stops, spare parts lots and miles of urban wasteland. Recently, Hernandez has explored a more abstract style and turned his lens on other landscapes, including Oakland in the Bay Area. His current work is once again focused on Los Angeles, and reflects his deep engagement with the city that has been his most enduring subject.
Photographs by