Under the Sun. LA by Freddy Perez

The colours of LA in the viewfinder, and the size expanse of a city like Los Angeles is barely comprehensible. Nevertheless, many attempts have been made to capture LA photographically. The freeways, the superficial glamour and the dream factory have produced iconic images. Yet when one explores this city on foot, as Freddy Perez did over a period of two years, a quite different picture emerges. Beneath the blue sky and the glaring sun, the city of longing and of dreams becomes an abstract image. Without pursuing typologies or particular motifs, without recording social aspects or spontaneous situations in the street, LA is shown soberly and crystal-clear in the harsh light. Sun, shadow, light and colour alone determine the composition. Thus the various elements interlock within the rectangle of the viewfinder – sky, architecture, cars, lettering, plants – to form a planar whole in which foreground and background merge without hierarchy. Freddy Perez moves through the city and, through the camera’s viewfinder, finds pictorial compositions that captivate through their clarity as well as their abstraction. Freddy Perez is Marius Lüscher. Fabienne Eggelhöfer writes: “He spent more than two years in Los Angeles, further developing his abstract painting. On his walks through the city, he encountered and consequently photographed unexpected urban situations that inspired his notions of abstraction.”