Background
Anthony Hernandez was born on July 7, 1947 in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Installation View of Discarded: Photographs by Anthony Hernandez exhibition at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Installation View of Discarded: Photographs by Anthony Hernandez exhibition at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art
(His "Landscapes for the Homeless" series, which Anthony H...)
His "Landscapes for the Homeless" series, which Anthony Hernandez produced from 1988-1991, captured images of homelessness sites located near and under Los Angeles freeways, focusing exclusively on the inhabitants' makeshift shelters and discarded refuse nearby.
https://www.amazon.com/Sons-Adam-Landscapes-Hernandez-1997-11-03/dp/B01FEM06YI/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Anthony+Hernandez+Sons+of+Adam+-+Landscapes+for+the+Homeless+2.+1997&qid=1580114970&sr=8-1
1997
("Pictures for Rome," a series Anthony Hernandez made from...)
"Pictures for Rome," a series Anthony Hernandez made from 1998–1999 under the auspices of the Rome Prize, eschews views of classic structures in favor of details of abandoned buildings and incomplete office structures located on the periphery of the city. Anthony Hernandez used the same square format he had used for his "Landscapes of the Homeless" pictures, and they were his first images taken indoors.
https://www.amazon.com/Anthony-Hernandez-Pictures-Ralph-Rugoff/dp/1889195456/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?keywords=Anthony+Hernandez+Pictures+for+Rome.+2000&qid=1580114999&sr=8-1-fkmr1
2000
(This sequence of 12 images - all taken in Los Angeles, Ca...)
This sequence of 12 images - all taken in Los Angeles, California on the same day in 1971 - represents some of the earliest black and white work by Anthony Hernandez.
https://www.amazon.com/L-1971-Anthony-Hernandez/dp/B00UOBD28C/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=Anthony+Hernandez+L.A.%2C+1971.+201&qid=1580115202&sr=8-1-fkmr0
2014
(Forever comprises photographs taken in the downtown area ...)
Forever comprises photographs taken in the downtown area of Los Angeles and the poorer neighbourhoods of Compton, Watts and South Central, made between 2007–2012. The work traces the movements of the homeless, in images which take up the point of view of the homeless person. So, rather than photographing the material trace – a chair or bed – Hernandez photographs what might be might seen and observed from the street itself. The title was drawn from a previous work Landscapes for the Homeless (1996), exhibited at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover.
https://www.amazon.com/Forever-Anthony-Hernandez/dp/1910164216/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=Anthony+Hernandez+Forever.+London%3A+Mack%2C+2017&qid=1580116486&sr=8-1-fkmr0
2017
Anthony Hernandez was born on July 7, 1947 in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Anthony Hernandez traces his introduction to photography to a textbook a friend gave him when he was a senior at Roosevelt High School. His first camera was a 35mm Nikon purchased with money he won in a raffle.
Anthony Hernandez took basic photography courses while attending East Los Angeles College from 1966-1967, though he is largely self-taught.
Anthony Hernandez began to devote his time to photography after serving in the United States Army from 1967-1969 (he served as a medic in the Vietnam War in 1968). In the summer of 1969, he took a workshop with Lee Friedlander, and in 1970 he built his own darkroom in an apartment he rented in the Westlake area of Los Angeles.
In the same year, Hernandez's work was included in his first museum exhibition and publication, California Photographers, 1970, a survey of new photography from the state. The 1971 exhibition and publication, The Crowded Vacancy, is regarded as being seminal in launching the photographer's career.
In 1970 Anthony Hernandez presented a portfolio of images to John Szarkowski, curator of photographs at the Museum of Modern Art, who purchased two photographs for the museum and also introduced him to the photographers Dianne Arbus, Duane Michals, and Garry Winogrand.
Starting in 1969, his work is defined by 35 mm black-and-white street photography in Los Angeles and Hollywood. His early work shows the influence of Garry Winogrand.
In the late 1970s Anthony Hernandez began to use a Deardorff 5x7 view camera, which changed the character of his work. Between 1978 and 1983 he continued to make images of prosaic elements of Los Angeles street life and public spaces, but the wider orientation of the view camera resulted in people taking a less prominent place in his pictures while augmenting the presence of the built environment. Many of the images suggest darker social realities. Collectively these series offer rare examples in any art form that depict the day-to-day lives of the poor and working class of Los Angeles.
In 1984–1985, responding to a suggestion from an art director at Los Angeles magazine, he shifted to color work with a series of 35 mm close-up street portraits of shoppers taken on Rodeo Drive. He used the same zone focus technique he had used in his earliest street work whereby the camera is pre-focused for a set distance, allowing for quick capture. Even so, they adopt some of the same deliberateness and formalness of his view camera work. He also chose to use transparency film and printed in Cibachrome to accentuate the color. He stopped photographing people after this project, and it marked the beginning of his exclusive use of color photography.
In 1986, as artist-in-residence at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, Anthony Hernandez photographed an array of spent shells and exploded debris left over at a target range - absent of the shooters. He continued this project after the residency and added shooting ranges located in the Angeles National Forest. This series, "Shooting Sites," signaled a shift in his artistic vision toward capturing scenes suggesting abandonment and desolation absent of human players yet charged with intrigue about their involvement.
His "Pictures for Oakland" (2001) and "Pictures for L.A." (2000-2002) document various states of construction and disintegration of buildings, the latter including the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Belmont Learning Center, and Aliso Village.
A body of work associated with the Los Angeles River created from January 2003-May 2004, "Everything," explores the river and environs - areas near Hernandez's boyhood home - in a series of color still lifes of flotsam and jetsam situated in or near the river. These images function concurrently as color and form studies, and as commentary on societal relationships with the discarded objects.
In a series Hernandez shot from 2007-2012, Forever, he revisits homeless sites, yet changes the perspective to one of looking out from within an encampment.
In "Discarded," 2012–2015, Anthony Hernandez comments on the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis in his austere color photographs of abandoned houses and other remains located in residential subdivisions in the desert east of Los Angeles. This series marks the return of people to his images, including at least one portrait.
"Screen Pictures" (2017-2018) is a series of city portraits of Los Angeles that were photographed through the metal mesh of bus stops. The depicted places look abstract. The human figures present blur due to the abstraction that results from the capture through the metal mesh and the focus on it.
Anthony Hernandez continues to use film cameras, though his prints are digitally produced. Although his recent "Screened Pictures," due to the grid and the abstraction, have a "digital appearance", they have all been photographed on film and not been digitally manipulated.
(His "Landscapes for the Homeless" series, which Anthony H...)
1997("Pictures for Rome," a series Anthony Hernandez made from...)
2000(This sequence of 12 images - all taken in Los Angeles, Ca...)
2014(Forever comprises photographs taken in the downtown area ...)
2017