Since 2016 Ken Karagozian has been documenting the building of the Regional Connector Transit Project, the 1.9-mile underground light rail project with three new stations now under construction in downtown Los Angeles. On Wednesday, October 18, from 12:15 p.m. to 1 p.m., the Los Angeles Central Library will host Karagozian for a talk where he will share a collection of his most recent construction portraits and landscapes.
Karagozian will display photographs taken with black and white film as well as digital images. He will also share his perspective on an underground world inhabited by heavy-duty machinery and the real men and women who labor each day in an environment surrounded by soil and steel. This is a unique opportunity to see a massive transit project from a new point of view.
Photographer’s Eye—The Building of Downtown Los Angeles Regional Connector Transit Project, Photographs by Ken Karagozian is free and open to the public. Visit the Los Angeles Public Library website for more information.
About the photographer
Ken Karagozian has been documenting the building of Los Angeles transit projects since the 1990s. In the ’70s, Karagozian’s high school photography teacher took his photography class to visit the studio of renowned photographer Ansel Adams in Carmel, CA. Here he discovered his love for black & white film and the craft of making a fine art print. After high school he continued taking photography workshops with some of Ansel’s assistants and other fine art photographers. As a photographer he tries to exhibit the human emotions of the construction workers. His worked has been exhibited in galleries, the Los Angeles Times, Life magazine, and is collected at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA.
I remember years ago in school taking a class on the history of photography. It used to be the norm to emphasize documenting the workers over what was being built; photographers gradually seemed to step away from that during the past century. I’m glad to see that this guy recognizes the importance of the human side, and look forward to his presentation.