Review in Art Ltd : Pamela Mayers-Schoenberg

Pamela Mayers-Schoenberg's exhibition "The Vermont Project" was recently reviewed in Art Ltd magazine's July/August issue.  This documentary photography exhibition was shown at dnj Gallery May 1- 31, 2014.  See below for full review.  For more information or images, please contact us.

LOS ANGELES

Pamela Mayers-Schoenberg: “The Vermont Project”

at dnj Gallery

It’s always interesting to see the world through the eyes of others,

especially if they’ve just arrived in a new place. Hence, Pamela

Mayers-Schoenberg’s new body of work “The Vermont Project” needs

to be understood as the perception of a Cincinnati native, for whom

“multi-culturalism” had only been a term and not a daily-lived experience,

before she moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s. Mayers-Schoenberg

started her 18-month-project in fall 1997 with an artist’s grant from the

City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs that she received for

her previous project “The Boys.” The show is comprised of 50 blackand-

white photographs taken on Vermont Avenue, one of the longest

north/south streets in Los Angeles, with a length of about 23 miles. It

includes images of Los Feliz, Hollywood, Koreatown, South Central

and Harbor City. However, instead of concentrating on the major attractions

of these neighborhoods, such as the Greek Theater or the

Observatory (where the film “Rebel Without A Cause” with James

Dean was famously shot), Mayers-Schoenberg captured its ordinary

people and their everyday lives, either working, dancing, eating,

strolling, relaxing, or gathering on the streets. Her photos recall the

works of New York scene photographers Vivian Maier and Rebecca

Lebkoff, shot with the sentiment of Diane Arbus, who said that “the

camera is a license to enter the lives of others.” Her subjects are either

presented posing or otherwise engaged; sometimes slightly aware, at

other times completely unaware of the camera.

One image (21) displays a young man with a Kafiya scarf on his head,

who is buying incense from an African-American salesman on the

corner of 3rd Street and Vermont in Hollywood, both looking slightly

towards the camera. Another (43) shows a woman and a man with

sun hats, shot from behind, while she’s reading and he’s studying a

newspaper stand, which tellingly sells a gamut of multi-ethnic

publications, such as La Opinión, The Asia Times, and USA Today.

Image (7) depicts a gray-haired African American woman posing on a

porch swing in South Central, gazing directly into the camera. Although

these people share the same street, there is no sense of just one

community, and it is this striking fact that Mayers-Schoenberg’s project

tries to address. “Through my images, I want to build a collective vision

and create an interaction among the various neighborhoods,” she has

said. With this work, she does just that.

—SIMONE KUSSATZ