New Metro photographic artwork on display

Metro is excited to announce the latest installment of its acclaimed Metro Art Photo Lightbox series. In addition to the often large-scale and permanent work that Metro brings to stations throughout Los Angeles County, the art program also presents mini photography exhibitions by artists in select Red and Purple Line stations.

Photo lightboxes on display in one of the Red Line stations. The series is intended to contribute something visually engaging for customers and enhance the overall experience of taking transit.

Photo lightboxes on display in one of the Red Line stations. The series is intended to contribute something visually engaging for customers and enhance the overall experience of taking transit.

The latest installment will be on view through 2016 and consists of work by five well-known artists: Star Montana, Gary Leonard, Mitchell Debrowner, Harry Gamboa, Jr., and Diane Meyer.

The artists and descriptions of their work are listed below by Metro station location. Each photography display remains on view in a given station for several months at a time then rotates until all five artists have displayed at all five locations.

Don’t want to wait? Create your own self-initiated art tour! Make your way south on the Red Line from Universal City, through Hollywood (Hollywood/Highland and Vermont/Beverly Stations) and downtown L.A. (7th/Metro Center), then loop west to Wilshire/Normandie Station in Koreatown.

Initiated in 2001, the Metro Art Lightbox Program presents photography exhibitions that engage a broad range of Metro riders on their daily commute. Each lightbox series is comprised of seven photographic transparencies, each measuring three feet by four feet and sequentially arranged on internally illuminated boxes. See past photo lightboxes here.

The 2014 to 2016 rotation features the following artists at these stations:

Universal Station: Star Montana, Saint Louis is our Salvation

Photographs document intimate moments between the artist’s family and their baby Louise, the first of the next generation. Louise arrived shortly before the death of the artist’s mother, Louisa, and brought great joy to the grieving family. The artist seeks to connect the riders who may spend long hours separated from their families and may feel a longing to be home while commuting.

Hollywood/Highland: Harry Gamboa Jr., Vidrio

Photographs document performers in an implied visual opera, who attempt to engage the viewer by presenting a range of characters cast within the urban environment of downtown Los Angeles.

Vermont/ Beverly: Gary Leonard, Community of Angels

Portraits of a cross-section of Angelenos were photographed in front of wings created by artist Collete Miller on a roll down gate on Main Street . The wings signify the goodness that each of us has to contribute to Los Angeles. The Angelenos that Leonard captured in his photographs include Charles Phoenix, Blair Besten, Eric Garcetti, Traffic Officer Montenegro, Patt Morrison, Bill Rosendahl, and Paul Greenstein.

7th/Metro: Diane Meyer, Born on a Train

During a train ride from Oakland to New York, the artist utilized the travel time to create artistic installations that reinterpreted the interior space of a sleeper car, as well as the relationship between the train and the passing landscape. Photographs document the relative slowness of cross-country train travel and the artist’s unique experience of that journey.

Wilshire/Normandie: Mitchell Debrowner, Untitled

Landscape photographs compare the endurance of geological features with the less permanent built environment. Cityscapes are dwarfed by landforms and cloudscapes, in an effort to emphasize the rapid pace of change in the city against the much more slowly shifting natural world.