Coffee Break by Ernest Holzman at Known Gallery.
Cinematographer Ernest Holzman’s stunning and surreal photographic journey through Los Angeles, “L.A. Backstory,” at Known Gallery is as much about the city as it is about the artist.
Running through January 26, Holzman’s large photographs, follow a beautiful, ghost-like, nude female from Pink’s Hot Dogs to LAX, from Paramount Studios to Union Station. She is celestial, innocent, wood nymph-like; almost not of our world, but her tattoos remind us that she is. She represents Holzman’s uncertainty of the future.
“It was the way I was feeling, and still do,” Holzman says.
Holzman was working on a movie in New Orleans in the summer of 2011 when he went to the doctor who found a stage four cancerous tumor. He immediately went into chemotherapy upon returning to Los Angeles, and now, just over a year later, his cancer has shrunk to Stage One or Two.
“Because of the cancer, I withdrew to the point where I didn’t want to be around people because I didn’t want visitors showing up at my house with casseroles as if I was about to die” Holzman says. “Being asked to do this show got me out of the shell I had been in with the cancer. I also started playing the drums again, which I hadn’t done since I was very young. Creating this work has been healing, cathartic and gave me a new lease on life.”
Holzman’s photographs were shot guerrilla-style over the course of a month or two. The model disrobed in public places, and people saw her fully nude in the street, but as Holzman said, “the world kept going on around her.” In some photos, police cars and pedestrians pass nearby oblivious to her full nudity.
Most of the shots are taken from behind the model. “I find the human back more interesting—it has to do with the unknown, like my own unknown,” Holzman says, “Being a voyeur in a way, and letting her do my watching.”
In life, as in art, Holzman, and his wife Terry Kannofsky, make a great duo. In fact, Kannofsky, also a fine artist, is Holzman’s co-exhibitor in Known Gallery’s back room.
Her found object collages (“American Detritus, 2.5″) comprosed of collected debris from daily neighborhood walks in Cheviot Hills would make Louise Nevelson proud.
Known Gallery, 441 North Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles CA 90038 (just north of Canter’s Deli), is open Wed – Sat 12 – 7pm. Sun 12 – 6pm.
Jesus Saves, Broadway by Ernest Holzman at Known Gallery.
Union Station by Ernest Holzman at Known Gallery.
