126 Garland Ave., L. A., from the portfolio Los Angeles Documentary Project

Between 1976 and 1981, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) funded seventy photography surveys in fifty-five communities across thirty states to celebrate the American bicentennial. Unlike previous government-funded documentary projects—such as the Historic American Building Survey (HABS), which has operated since 1933—these were a civic-oriented means of gaining a better understanding of the aesthetics and sociopolitical climates of the 1970s.

One of the last and most ambitious of these surveys was the Los Angeles Documentary Project. Eight photographers received commissions to contribute, including John Humble, who was drawn to the incongruities and ironies of the Los Angeles landscape. His vibrant color photographs were exposed on 4×5 transparency sheet film and developed by hand using a labor-intensive process of layering and masking to produce a particular warm contrast that he saw to be characteristic of Los Angeles light, a result of sun meeting haze. A consistent pleasure in examining Humble’s prints is the inclusion of the odd attention-grabbing detail such as the warping shadow of a telephone pole on the taffy-yellow facade of a mobile home pending destruction at sunset, or a flowerpot teetering on the edge of a battered teal windowsill as a Bank of America tower looms to the right.

These images are precise in composition but curious in their contribution to what is considered “documentary,” having been made under the rather open-ended directive: “explore Los Angeles and develop new photographic techniques.” This invitation to experiment shifted Humble’s approach; previously, he had photographed Los Angeles with 35mm black-and-white film. He continues to photograph using the method he developed for the project, revisiting sites of tension between the industrial and residential and creating a portrait of nature always at odds with this sprawling city.

—Marié Nobematsu-Le Gassic, MFA ’25