The Lot 44 Gallery invites you to view LA Alone, an art exhibition by artist Jennifer Lyn Browne.  The exhibition shows from November 12th through December 27th, 2009.  An artist reception will be held on Thursday, November 12th from 6:00 - 9:00 p.m. during the Downtown LA Artwalk.  Lot 44 Gallery is located at 257 S. Spring St, Los Angeles, 90012.

Artist, Jennifer Lyn Browne, presents a photographic series that captures the stark beauty found in Downtown Los Angeles.  Shot during the lonelier times of sunset, Browne evokes humbling visages of Downtown LA's streets and facades that have risen next to the quiet trickling Los Angeles River.  From the river to the Civic Center to the Garment District, Browne's eye reveals staidness within the bustling Downtown Los Angeles environment.  Like an ethnographer that enters the ruins of a deceased Mayan culture, Browne's photographs ask what is this space that holds so many people, what is it that is here?

She evokes these questions through photographs that are compositionally devoid of Angelenos.  Perhaps you'll find a sunken soul on a curb or a pedestrian ambling down a block in a photograph, but Browne's downtown structures and walkways are the requisite objects that provide subtle yet beautiful observations of LA.  They are photographic depictions not of what we see now as we rush through our daily lives in LA, but of what we are leaving behind when our lives soon retire.  And, if possible, not so much who we are but what we needed.  This ethnographic quest for answers, however, for Browne, is a solitary search rooted in loneliness.  Browne's remark "What a massive city LA is, yet how lonely it can be," is one that reverberates among many in the LA basin.  Yet, Browne's photographs do not lie in despair: she visually gives us room to contemplate such loneliness.

This contemplation lies in Browne's photographic techniques.  She focuses on the high lit values of a composition: silvery-edged clouds waning behind the US Bank Tower; tall pulsating street lamps over the train yards; a mere reflection of dusk in an alley puddle.  The compositions are then digitally finished to enhance all the darkness, the grays, the bland details that can be found in both ignored city streets or in blurred recognition of pillared downtown icons (When is the last time you just stopped and looked at the multi-layered DWP building?) for a more impassioned and thorough visual investigation of the picture. 

In Browne's camera, everything old becomes new again, and everything new finds an equal measure of mystery within all the Los Angeles cityscape.  Whether it's the shine of the Westin Bonaventure or the coarse pavement surrounding the Toy District, Browne's photographs capture a solemn narrative that is equally monumental to the LA skyline.  Browne angles a view of Downtown a bit more quietly, less hurried, alone.  

For Browne, these Downtown LA streets and buildings may be our only emblems of our souls, lost or otherwise, to be left behind and rediscovered by some future ethnographer or anthropologist.  But to look at Downtown LA as Browne does here, may be the best thing for the many people who at times feel alone in LA, because ultimately with Browne's introspective photographic filter, Los Angeles is just the right beautiful place you want to live if you're feeling lonely.

Exhibition Dates:
November 12th - December 27th, 2009
 
Artist reception
Thursday, November 12th
6:00 - 9:00 p.m. 
during the Downtown L.A. Artwalk

Lot 44 Coffee Gallery is located at 257 S. Spring St, Los Angeles, 90012 (click here for a map).