LA as Subject Blog
Who Took the First Photo of Los Angeles?
Widely considered the earliest photograph of Los Angeles, the origin story of this image remains something of a mystery. Who took the photo, and when? Though the image and the historical record offer clues, they provide no definitive answers. What we do know is that some day in the late 1850s or… Read more »
Topics: KCET
FINAL WEEK: “Becoming Persian” at the Fowler Museum
This installation highlights the work of local and award winning photographer Shelley Gazin and is featured in the "Light and Shadows: The Story of Iranian Jews" exhibit at the Fowler Museum.
"Becoming Persian: Photographs & Text Threads Illuminating the Iranian-Jewish Community" is a… Read more »
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When L.A. Was Empty: Wide-Open SoCal Landscapes
Early photographs of Los Angeles surprise for many reasons, but often what's most striking is how empty the city looks. Open countryside surrounds familiar landmarks. Busy intersections appear as dusty crossroads.
Southern California entered the photographic record at the cusp of a dramatic… Read more »
Topics: KCET
Before Its Time: Burbank’s Experimental Monorail
Decades before Walt Disney moved his studio there and dreamed up Tomorrowland, Burbank glimpsed another man’s futuristic vision in 1910, when a colorful inventor named Joseph Fawkes built an experimental monorail, the Aerial Swallow.
Topics: LA Magazine
The L.A. That Might Have Been
A spiraling, 1,290-foot tower built of magnesium. A rapid-transit system with hundreds of miles of subways and elevated tracks. A comprehensive network of parks, beaches, and open spaces linked by greenbelts and parkways. These are just a few unrealized visions for Los Angeles featured in an… Read more »
Topics: KCET
When the Los Angeles River Ran Wild
Imagine the Los Angeles River before its metamorphosis into a concrete flood control channel, and Mark Twain’s quip about falling into a California river and coming out “all dusty” might come to mind. But the historical record, including photos like the shown here, paints a much different… Read more »
Topics: LA Magazine
St. Vincent Medical Center celebrates 150th anniversary
Established in 1856, St. Vincent Medical Center is the oldest medical institution in Los Angeles and celebrated operating for 157 years on January 6, 2013. The hospital’s sisters have collected more than a century of hospital photos, medical records and artifacts to create a conservancy to share… Read more »
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The Lost Train Depots of Los Angeles
Before the Jet Age brought safe and comfortable air travel to the masses, most newcomers in Los Angeles arrived by rail. Train depots thus provided tourists' and emigrants' first introduction to Los Angeles, helping shape their ideas about the city. The city's grandest passenger terminal,… Read more »
Topics: KCET
What the LAPD Leaves Behind at Parker Center
From 1955 until 2009, when most staff moved to a new administrative building a block away, the Los Angeles Police Department’s Parker Center was as a proud symbol of police modernization and a focal point for controversy. Last week Chief Charlie Beck padlocked its front doors, and the aging… Read more »
Topics: LA Magazine
Sipping Black Gold from the Center of La Cienega Boulevard
Petroleum provided the raw materials for the gasoline that powered Angelenos’ automobiles as well as the asphalt on which they drove, so in one sense the middle of La Cienega Boulevard was a fitting place for an oil derrick. But many failed to see the logic. For decades, photos of this bizarrely… Read more »
Topics: LA Magazine
