Customer Reviews

Lost Angeles

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

At last someone has created a photographic portfolio that examines and celebrates the City of the Angels with all the fulfilled and aborted dreams of life in the golden spotlight that this city represents. Paul Jasmin is a sensitive photographer and in these plentiful works in both luxurious color and soft duotones he has sought and found youths in search of the rainbow, capturing them in pensive hopeful moments and private sad stances as the pot of gold either absorbs or eludes them.

Jasmin's settings are imaginative yet never contrived and the people he photographs are at once beautiful and intransigent. Some are in Hollywoodesque costume while others are nude. No matter the pose, Jasmin retains a respect for the model and for the models' intact or bruised dreams.

Opening the book are comments by Bruce Weber, one of the finest photographers of the male nude, and by Sofia Coppola, a sensitive director and `friend' to the hopeful vagrants and to Los Angeles as a city of dreams. Together with Jasmin's photographs they have created a book that is a beautiful art piece as well as a gentle psychological reverie about Los Angeles. Highly recommended. Grady Harp

This is my Los Angeles. The one I see when I walk around on streets, staring at things. The one I try to capture with every piece of fiction I write. This is it.

So many portrayals of Los Angeles, whether fictional, nonfictional, or photographical, take all the wrong parts of California cliche and try to call it LA. Look, here are some movie stars. Look, here are some bored rich kids. Look, here's the 'underbelly of Hollywood', whatever that means.

Paul Jasmin gets it right. The dirty pretty people wearing leather. The graffiti, the cigarettes, the lounging around, the leopard print. One of my favourite images features a scruffy, aging writer at his laptop, surrounded by books and wearing a shirt that says 'When we were punk'. It's so far from any travel guide with the Hollywood sign on the front. I just want to cheer, //Here it is. This is it. This is my Los Angeles.//

Paul Jasmin lives and works in Hollywood and his photographs are infused with both the light and the grit of this section of Los Angeles. In an age of digital manipulation, Jasmin's work has the depth and richness of film and the practiced eye of an artist who knows of composition, texture, and above all feeling.

True that many of his subjects are young and beautiful. But nothing about them seems forced. They are relaxing in the afternoon light, on a bed near a window, or reading at a long dining table in an old room with faded wallpaper. Some are nude, some are not, but in most of the images one senses an empathy in Mr. Jasmin that cannot be faked.

You can walk in the same steps as Mr. Jasmin if your visit Whitley Heights. The old 1920's buildings are here, the ones with the crooked wooden floorboards and the casement windows. You may also see young hopefuls rushing up the hill, carrying their backpacks, on their way home from an audition, under the palms.

While i do like this book i must say 'california dreaming' is a little bit more striking. Im still very glad i bought this book, its still brimming with paul jasmins masterful use of natural light.

This photography book is a great start for anybody who is interested in photography. I admit I loved the portraits. A book of people for the people :)

These photos are supposed to be showing the real and gritty lives of struggling and/or disillusioned seekers of stardom. But you've seen all these photos or their near cousins before, and they are obviously posed when they're the type of thing that should be candid. Well, the photographer did a good job of making them LOOK real. It would have helped if he had varied the models and settings more.