Gebhard and Winter are Sissies

Ever read any of the so-called Los Angeles Architectural Guides? They're more interested in bland Monterrey revivals in Brentwood and miniature golf courses in Encino than detailing the mother lode that is South Los Angeles. East L.A. often gets shorted too, particularly on beyond Soto.


In Bungalow [Arayan] Nation, errrr, author Diane Maddex touches down in Pasadena, and then--overlooking the greatest concentration of Arts-and-Crafts houses in the United States of America--profiles a pair of shamefully mediocre abodes in Santa Monica.





Gives you greater respect for someone like Jose Camilo Vergara, a photographer/sociologist who has visited and re-visited many of America's most squalid urban epicenters, what he calls "hyper ghettoes", detailing significant architectural casualties and alterations.


Vergara's most recent book is entitled, How the Other Half Worships, and it features extensive depiction of Los Angeles area storefront churches and other unexpected adaptations.




His style, often simplistically referred to as stark, is respectful and pensive.
Perhaps most evocative are his "time lapse" sequences, like the sort I've crudely rephotographed here (from The New American Ghetto)





Vergara's L.A. photo musings appear occasionally in the Times Sunday magazine, most recently with a piece on abandoned autos. Currently, he is working on a photographic survey of Richmond, California and Camden, New Jersey.