Landscapes for the homeless #16

Anthony Hernandez now lives and works in Idaho and Los Angeles. Since the 1970s, he has been interested in the inter-dependent relationship between urban space and its inhabitants, and since the mid-1980s human presence has only been suggested in his photographs.

Hernandez is known for his highly refined and formal images of urban landscapes such as the LA river, and associated detritus. In 1998-1999, he received the Rome Prize fellowship. He is included in many major museum collections in the US and Europe and he has exhibited widely in both continents over many years. He has been thrice awarded the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and received several residencies across the United States.

‘Landscapes for the homeless’ is a series which Hernandez completed in 1991 but has recently been re-shown in a selection made by fellow LA photographer James Welling. The series consists of large-scale photographs of makeshift dwellings of Los Angeles’ homeless. In common with all Hernandez’ photographs these are not simple documentation. Welling has described them as ‘table settings of the homeless’ so that the viewer understands that these social spaces are as valid as the more mainstream kind. The shapes and architectures in these works are moulded by humanity whether the freeways themselves or the spaces beneath them.

In January 2000 Ralph Rugoff wrote in ‘Artforum’ that ‘these pictures prompt us to experience some of the turmoil wreaked on an individual by his social invisibility’.