Chavez Ravine: 1949 [Paperback]

Don Normark (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2003

In 1949, photographer Don Normark walked up into the hills of Los Angeles, looking for a good view. Instead, he found Chavez Ravine, a ramshackle Mexican-American neighborhood tucked away in Elysian Park like a poor mans Shangri-la. Enchanted, he stayed for a year amidst the wild roses, tin roofs, and wandering goats of this uniquely intact rural community on the citys outskirts. Accepted by the residents, Normark was able to photo-graph a life that, though bowed down by poverty, was lived fully, openly, and joyfully. That ended in 1950, when the residents of Chavez Ravine received letters from the government directing them to sell their homes and leave. Some sold, some were dragged out of their houses kicking and screaming. The emptied houses were razed to make way for Dodger Stadium. The past fifty years have not erased the memories of Los Desterrados, the uprooted descendents of Chavez Ravine. Now available in paperback, this beautiful, haunting book captures their images, their stories, and their bittersweet memories. A social and cultural history of Los Angeles and Mexican America, Chavez Ravine reclaims and celebrates this lost village from a simpler time.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Don Normark has had more than ten thousand photographs published in Sunset and other magazines. His award-winning work has been shown at galleries and museums around the US and is found in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, MIT, and the Smithsonian.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (May 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811840573
• ISBN-13: 978-0811840576
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #343,301 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brought my father's childhood stories to life!, November 15, 1999

By 

RoseMary Elias Perez ([e-mail]) (Dallas area) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chavez Ravine: 1949: A Los Angeles Story (Hardcover)

My father, Albert Elias (born - Los Angeles General Hospital in 1931), always told us stories of his childhood. It seemed unbelievable, to live so close to downtown Los Angeles, and yet he remembers running through the hills, trees, and swimming in the L.A. river! Every chance he had as we would drive through that area he would point out landmarks of his youth. We could only imagine, because all we could see was the Dodger Stadium, the parking lots, the freeways, and as for the "river"... to us it was a cemented canal. This book made me cry to see how truly beautiful this area once was, the harsh reality of the poverty, yet the incredible strength of the families that had the fortunate opportunity to experience living in the Chavez Ravine. How wonderful that Don Normark found this wonderland, and photographed it so well as a young man, and now like a miracle, fifty years later Don presents us with a museum quality photography books that tells a powerful story. We the readers can almost hear the "echos" of these neighborhoods in the L.A. hills through the incredible, hauntingly beautiful photographs, and relive the memories from those who once use to live there. This book made me feel extremely proud of my heritage.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars California noir, July 30, 2002

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chavez Ravine: 1949: A Los Angeles Story (Hardcover)

Nestled in the hills between downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena is Chávez Ravine, site of Dodger Stadium and its acres of parking lots. Few baseball fans here could tell you that long before the Dodgers left Brooklyn, Chávez Ravine was the home of three communities of Mexican-American laborers and their families.

Don Normark, a young photographer in 1948, was climbing in the hills looking for postcard-shot views of LA when he discovered La Loma, Palo Verde, and Bishop. Each neighborhood was a rambling cluster of buildings, dirt streets, and footpaths. The wooded slopes of Elysian Park overlooked the ravine, and beyond were the peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains. He felt he had found another world -- a kind of Shangri-La. For many months, he returned to take pictures of what he saw and of the people he met there. He didn't know that he was recording on film the daily life of a place and its people that was about to disappear.

The pictures, of course, are black and white, a rich range of gray tones and contrasts under the cloudless southern California sky. In a casual street scene, two men stand talking on the hard dirt, and a third, his back to them, leans across a low concrete wall. All is in sharp focus from the dusty tire track in the foreground to the pointed tower of City Hall nudging up over a darkly wooded ridge in the distance. The mid-afternoon light reflects brightly off one man's tee shirt and from the front of a small white house farther on. Meanwhile, the shadows cast by eaves, palm fronds, parked cars, and the men themselves are deeply dark.

There are many pictures of people, of all ages. Some look into the camera. Most are busy working, walking, talking, playing. A young girl wears her confirmation dress. A boy watches his father repair a car. Two men spar under branches thick with bougainvillea blossoms. An iceman stands in an open gateway, tongs slung over one shoulder. A young woman arranges flowers on an altar. A workman returns home along a winding footpath at the end of the day (see book jacket above).

Fifty years later, Normark gathered together his pictures and began looking for the people who had once lived in Chávez Ravine. This book is an album of those pictures, with commentary by the people he found, in their own words. Normark writes simply and clearly about himself and his experiences. Like his photographs, his writing style is sharply focused. In the opening pages of the book, he describes the forced relocation of the people of Chávez Ravine during the Fifties, and the various public and private interests contending for control of its development. Normark's book is both handsome and beautifully written, a fine example of text and image illuminating each other.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lost Community, January 10, 2000

By 

"aamunoz" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chavez Ravine: 1949: A Los Angeles Story (Hardcover)

It makes me so proud to see my Dad's old Mexican-American community captured in a book of photos. It's great to see my Aunt Sally Anchando quoted in the book. I recently saw my Aunts and Uncles who lived in Chavez Ravine (unfortunately, it was after my Mom's funeral). They passed around the book and talked about old times. I will pass this book on to my children, neices, and nephews so that they don't forget that their forefathers sacraficed a lot to create a better life for themselves and those who followed.