I love books. And I love photography. So I was so happy last year at the Festival of Books when I happened to come upon what I thought was a book of photography. It wasn’t. It’s much more than that. At least to me. Along Trousdale during the book festival weekend foot traffic is heavy. Tents stand left and right. Authors are speaking. Music plays. Don’t forget to hydrate, too. I perused books from New York Times bestsellers to novels by local authors. Good fun, but nothing really caught my eye... I was heading for the exit when nearing the checkout, I took one last look at the table next to me. Art books neatly stacked on a white table. One jumped out at me. It must have been the cover--a picture of palm trees and behind them a dark sky and a building the building reflected a pink hue. Union Station, Los Angeles, where I live. Something about this image and this book made me pick it up to see more. I bought the book and took it home.
After a day of reading, it became my favorite. I even love the title. “After/Image: Los Angeles Outside of the Frame”, by Lynell George.
Lynell George: Outside of this frame of reference people have about Los Angeles or the actual like motion picture frame or the photographic frame. It’s that it’s what was alive around the edges. And what do you have left when you pull that center image away? What is and also it’s playing on the term after image, you know, of that that sensation you have when you’ve looked at something for a long time and you close your eyes, what remains in your field of vision? You know, what is what is what is it that we think about when we think about L.A., when it’s pulled away?
In After/Image Lynell George tells her personal story of her experiences growing up in Los Angeles. Her Los Angeles. Inspired by the lens she viewed Los Angeles through. George plays with the title of the book. She expresses her experiences vividly in ways that allow you to connect to her. I can imagine myself in her shoes, growing up in South Central and seeing the city evolve in front of her eyes. I personally relate to her experiences as a Black woman in America. Although I did not spend most of my childhood in the country, I relate to her as she navigates her identity.
George moved to Los Angeles with her family when she was young. They were considered “blockbusters” at the time of the Great Migration. Her neighborhood soon became a place where families of different cultures came together. It allowed her to find community in the metropolitan city.
George: But people really did bring their culture to Los Angeles in a way that was vivid and we practiced it. It was in food, it was in slang, it was in music, it was in, um, this the stories they told. And when I, when I am like, feeling melancholy about what I miss about living there, it’s that that kind of closeness, that kind of family.
Today, if you ask me what is my favorite book, I will say After/Image, partly for reasons Lynell George expresses.
George: In certain ways there’s a Los Angeles that lives in our mind that does not exist anymore. But we are these beautiful representations of what that was and what that possibility was, and, you know, being able to have conversations across. Race lines and ethnic lines and and really like, build coalitions together and and that sort of thing. And how that merging of music and language really informed who we became and the jobs, you know, we chose to do because we were living in proximity to one another. And that richness really did matter. So I would say that that was something that discovering, you know, fellow travelers on this road.
I am pleased and proud to be a fellow traveler with Lynell George. I’m so glad I picked up the book that day.