Southern California Stark

If viewers get a shock of recognition--and this is not an unusual reaction to a John Humble photograph--it may be because the photographer had the very same experience. “I get in my car and drive around looking out the window. My first response to a subject is not an intellectual but an emotional one, that it strikes a chord in me,” says Humble of the process that has made him a premier photographer of the L.A. landscape.

Humble, whose work is on exhibit at the Jan Kesner Gallery through Feb. 22, attributes having lived “everywhere” as an Army child for seeing the unique quality of the boxy bungalows, power tower-crowned apartments and looming freeways that he photographs. And while he has recently begun roaming Malibu and Beverly Hills, the 16-year resident has found himself drawn primarily to working-class neighborhoods, where having that much less control over your environment results in a certain visual irony. “Somewhere like Santa Fe Springs, you might see above the houses a gigantic billboard about spraying for cockroaches,” not something one would expect on the Westside, “where everything is carefully shaped and manicured,” he says. Concerned also that he has gone as far as he can with landscapes, he has begun focusing on people, like the father and son skateboarders who paused for a portrait in Redondo Beach.

While he rails against the byproducts of L.A.’s car culture--the smog, the disassociation of people from each other--he lauds the city’s preeminence in popular culture: “It’s like the Morrissey lyrics, ‘We look to L.A. for the language we use.’ ” Besides, he says, in L.A. “I can do anything. I’ve even worn shorts to Trump’s.”