Courtesy of apartmenttherapy.com LA, I sampled this new project in which photographer Patrick Ecclesine attempts to capture the many lives on the entire 25 mile strip of Sunset Boulevard. Faces of Sunset Blvd. is an online photo essay broken up by neighborhood. You can slickly travel the website from Downtown to the Palisades and meet a couple residents. The people Ecclesine captured are stereotypical on a grandiose scale. You kind of have to expect it from a project that set out to recreate a cinematic feel in a city built by the entertainment industry. Ecclesine calls Los Angeles "the city best known for the manufacturing and packaging of fiction" but what his highly photoshopped images document is everyday people in what he assumes is the everyman's dream - starring in the opening credit sequence of some action flick on Sunset Blvd.

The movies and effects on Ecclesine's site drive home this simple metaphor even more. Titles pop at you as if you're in the back room of a seedy trailer and effects house. Every neighborhood is given a soundtrack you can listen to as you glance the photos and read the individual's testimonials. Echo Park gets an urban groove (we know it's urban because there are cop car sirens in the background) while Palisades goes for a groovy surfer vibe. The only unique moments in this whole online experience come in a couple of quotes from the participants. Henry Winkler and his son Max are adorable. The doctors of Kaiser Permanente are a little disturbing. The only new information I took away from the experience is seeing the vast indiscrepancies of per capita income. Silverlake: $17 thousand versus Bel Air: $107,412.

Lately I've been walking into the LA vs. NY debate where every self-righteous Manhattanite is at a loss when they encounter someone who actually prefers Los Angeles over their precious island. While this photo essay could easily be another 9/11 memorial piece (there's that epic slice-of-life quality) it also enforces all the stereotypes an outsider sees - Hollywood is full of actors; people get shot downtown; old Asian men are amusing. But the photographer is Angeleno born and raised. Maybe he really is a product of his environment.

Labels: art, reviews