Introduction by Robert Adams. Text by Erin O'Toole, Ralph Rugoff, Anthony Hernandez, Lewis Baltz.
Since the early 1970s, when he began photographing on the streets of his native Los Angeles, Anthony Hernandez has consistently pushed his practice into uncharted territory, challenging himself by adopting new formats and subject matter. Moving from black and white to color, from 35mm to large-format cameras, and from the human figure to landscapes to abstracted detail, he has produced an unusually varied body of work united by its arresting beauty and subtle engagement with social issues. At first largely unaware of the formal traditions of the medium, Hernandez developed his own style of street photography, one uniquely attuned to the desolate allure and sprawling expanses of LA.
Published to accompany the photographer’s first retrospective, Anthony Hernandez offers a comprehensive introduction to his career of more than 40 years, tracing his evolution as well as highlighting continuities across his practice. The catalogue represents the full range and breadth of Hernandez’s work, with an extensive plate section that includes many photographs that have never before been exhibited or published.
Anthony Hernandez (born 1947) grew up in a Los Angeles far removed from the idealized Hollywood image of the city. Since 1970 Hernandez’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe. Previous solo exhibitions include Discarded: Photographs by Anthony Hernandez at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas (2016); Anthony Hernandez at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2009); and Landscapes for the Homeless at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany (1995). He has published nine monographs, including Rodeo Drive, 1984 (2012), Waiting, Sitting, Fishing and Some Automobiles: Los Angeles (2007), and Landscapes for the Homeless (1995). Hernandez currently divides his time between Los Angeles and Fairfield, Idaho.
Robert Adams is an award-winning photographer whose work has been featured in prominent public collections and exhibitions, including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Denver Art Museum; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has published more than forty books of photography and critical essays. He met Hernandez in 1974, when the two were included in a group show at the Jack Glenn Gallery in Corona del Mar, California. Adams nominated Hernandez for the 1995 Sprengel Award, sponsored by the Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany, which resulted in an exhibition and Hernandez’s first monograph, Landscapes for the Homeless.
Erin O'Toole is Baker Street Foundation Associate Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Most recently she collaborated with Leo Rubinfien and Sarah Greenough on the retrospective exhibition Garry Winogrand (2013–15), which traveled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Jeu de Paume, Paris; and the Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid. She is a contributing author of The Photographic Object, 1970 (2016), Janet Delaney: South of Market (2013), Garry Winogrand (2013), Doug Rickard: A New American Picture (2012), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: 75 Years of Looking Forward (2009), Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840–1900 (2008), and Nancy Newhall: A Literacy of Images (2008).
Ralph Rugoff is director of the Hayward Gallery, London. From 2000 to 2006 he was director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College of the Arts, where he was also founding chair of the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice. He has curated exhibitions for the past twenty-five years, including the 2015 Lyon Biennale, and has contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogues and books on artists such as David Hammons, Paul McCarthy, Raymond Pettibon, Luc Tuymans, Mike Kelley, and Anthony Hernandez (Anthony Hernandez: Pictures for Rome, 2000). In 2005 Rugoff was the inaugural recipient of the Penny McCall Foundation’s Ordway Prize for arts writer and/or curator.
Lewis Baltz (1945–2014) was a celebrated photographer and photography instructor. His work has appeared in national and international solo and group exhibitions and has entered the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Tate Modern, London, among many others. He received numerous awards over the course of his career, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Baltz met Hernandez at the home of artist and curator Fred R. Parker in 1970 and became a longtime friend.
"Rodeo Drive #7" (1984) is reproduced from 'Anthony Hernandez.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The New York Times
Jonathan Blaustein
An empathetic, original view of what life is like on the streets.
San Franciso Museum of Modern Art
Erin O’Toole
The unidealized Los Angeles. The real L.A..... That incredible quality of light.
Time Out San Francisco
Stephen Heller
Anthony Hernandez's time has finally come.
Blouin Art Info
Anthony Hernandez captured the essence of many cities . . . but his hometown, Los Angeles and the areas inhabited by the working class, the homeless, and the poor have been the most captivating subject for his craft.
Artforum
Michael Ned Holte
Anthony Hernandez might be to Los Angeles what Eugène Atget is to Paris.
LA Times
Carolina A. Miranda
In the photographs of Anthony Hernandez, there are no swaying palm trees or cinematic sunsets. Instead, for half a century, this born-and-bred Angeleno has trained his unblinking lens on another L.A. - a city of the aged, of the working class, of the destitute.
i-D Magazine
Emily Manning
Hernandez is constantly exploring new forms and subject matters... Such a wide-spanning body of work is what makes Hernandez's new show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and its accompanying monograph, so exciting.
The New York Times
Arthur Lubow
Instead of focusing on the effect of development on the natural world, [Hernandez] portrays the human toll… His compositional style can make a cinder-block squat seem as monumental as a marble mausoleum.
Photograph Magazine
Vince Aletti
Whether you think of California as a promised land or a dead end, it’s always been a reliable source of inspiration for photographers, and some of my favorite new books explore the terrain from unexpected angles. The most substantial of these is Anthony Hernandez.
Photo-Eye Blog
Adam Bell
As a native of Los Angeles, Anthony Hernandez’s rigorous and tough photographs have examined the social and political landscape of the city for over forty years, teasing apart assumptions and forcing us to look at places we’d rather drive past and ignore…From his early street photography to his current work on the aftermath of the housing crisis in California, his eponymous monograph is an incredible collection that allows us to measure the full breadth of his remarkable achievement.
The New York Times
Luc Sante
...a native Angeleno who records his native city (and a few other places along the way) with an unsparing but transcendent eye...Hernandez is a major artist who belatedly just had his first retrospective, and its accompanying monograph...provides a gripping narrative.
Photo-Eye Blog, Best of 2016
Anne Wilkes Tucker
Hernandez can be as effectively succinct with words as he can with visual language. It’s a book to savor.
American Photo
Jack Crager
The hefty catalog traces the artist’s journey over five decades—evocative street photography, desolate Los Angeles cityscapes, color candids, still lifes featuring artifacts of indigents—all joined by Hernandez’s social conscience and compositional grace.
Frieze
Jennifer Piejko
Hernandez catalogues the avenues and intersections that make Los Angeles a city, and not only a web of connections between the area’s freeways and suburban sprawl.
in stock $49.95
Free Shipping
UPS GROUND IN THE CONTINENTAL U.S. FOR CONSUMER ONLINE ORDERS
"Los Angeles #2" (1970) is reproduced from Anthony Hernandez, the first major monograph on this quietly influential American photographer whose career survey is on view at SFMOMA through January 1. Robert Adams writes, "Alfred Stieglitz said that 'all true things are equal to one another,' and in that he spoke for most artists. They are convinced, despite having to sort through daily practicalities by triage, that everything is of immeasurable consequence. For Anthony Hernandez, everything really means everything—a chair made of broken drywall, a fishing place where one might not want to eat the catch, a platinum-colored wig... And everything means everyone—a woman with flowers in her hair, a man with a boxer’s broken face, an office worker alone at noon with a book... Why, on the evidence of the pictures, is everything important?" continue to blog
"I am so glad that his work is finally getting the attention it deserves... It’s as tough as nails, but I think it comes out of a sensitivity." -- Robert Adams, quoted in The New York Times
In the 25 years since Anthony Hernandez completed his seminal 1988-1991 Landscapes for the Homeless series, he has continued to photograph the sprawling fringe of Los Angeles. Featured image, from the 2002 Everything series, was made along the banks of the Los Angeles River, where Hernandez used to roam as a child, "playing along its man-made banks and in the enormous storm drains that feed it," according to SFMOMA retrospective curator Erin O'Toole. "What he found when he returned as an adult was both a waste dump and an alien world unto itself, a place where, as M.G. Lord puts it, 'more or less Everything' washes up, from leaves and dead birds to doll parts and clippings of human hair." Read more in this weekend's New York Times. continue to blog
From 1988-1991, Anthony Hernandez photographed unpopulated homeless encampments for the little-known yet seminal series, Landscapes for the Homeless. From 2007-2012, he returned to the camps to capture the inhabitants' view from the perspective of their beds. "While the earlier pictures look in on the camps, those in Forever look out, away from the debris left behind, and were taken as if Hernandez were living there himself," curator Erin O'Toole writes in the revelatory new SFMOMA exhibition catalogue. "These works tend to be more tightly framed than the earlier ones, with simple, direct, and graphic compositions: 'Forever #74' (2011, pictured here) depicts the peacock hues of a stoplight’s glow bouncing off the tiled interior of a traffic tunnel; in "Forever #20" (2007) a constellation of spider webs articulate a cement ceiling stained with soot from a homeless person’s cook fire; and "Forever #13" (2010), with its pastel pinks and greens, recalls Claude Monet’s Giverny as reflected in a shallow pool of rainwater." continue to blog
"Anthony Hernandez isn't, can't be, and doesn't pretend to be the voice of the homeless; nor does he spectacularize their condition," Louis Baltz is quoted in Anthony Hernandez, the superb catalogue to the career retrospective which opens today at SFMOMA. "His work offers an index of those conditions, or more exactly, of those conditions that can be seen and photographed. The conditions of shelter at ground zero." Hernandez's response? "The photographs don't give you the sound of the freeway, the smell of rotten food, and defecation. Yeah, what is this place?" Featured image is "Landscape for the Homeless #1" (1988). continue to blog
"Photographs of Desperate Shadows Cast by the California Sun" -- The New York Times
Reviewed in this weekend's New York Times,Anthony Hernandez is the sleeper blockbuster of 2016. "Los Angeles #14" (1973) belongs to his early work, echoing faintly of Garry Winogrand, whom Hernandez met in New York at the suggestion of MoMA photography god, John Szarkowski. But Hernandez's pictures "are not about gesture or sexual energy or the theatricality of the street, as Winogrand's often are," curator Erin O'Toole writes, "Raw and desolate, both physically and emotionally, they have a stillness and gravity rarely found in Winogrand's work until the late 1970s. His are reticent photographs that do not offer easy access." continue to blog
"The first career retrospective for Mr. Hernandez, 69, who for half a century has been compiling a singular record of his hometown... the terrain he travels is largely unexplored." --The New York Times
Anthony Hernandez is one of the greatest living American photographers, and yet his work was largely unknown until his recent SFMOMA retrospective. "Rodeo Drive #3" (1984), from the photographer's last series to depict people, is reproduced from the SFMOMA catalog, which Hernandez will sign today from 6-7PM at the AIPAD Photography Show. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 11 in. / 280 pgs / 245 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $49.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $67.5 ISBN: 9781942884019 PUBLISHER: D.A.P./San Francisco Museum of Modern Art AVAILABLE: 9/27/2016 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WRLD Export via T&H
Published by D.A.P./San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Introduction by Robert Adams. Text by Erin O'Toole, Ralph Rugoff, Anthony Hernandez, Lewis Baltz.
Since the early 1970s, when he began photographing on the streets of his native Los Angeles, Anthony Hernandez has consistently pushed his practice into uncharted territory, challenging himself by adopting new formats and subject matter. Moving from black and white to color, from 35mm to large-format cameras, and from the human figure to landscapes to abstracted detail, he has produced an unusually varied body of work united by its arresting beauty and subtle engagement with social issues. At first largely unaware of the formal traditions of the medium, Hernandez developed his own style of street photography, one uniquely attuned to the desolate allure and sprawling expanses of LA.
Published to accompany the photographer’s first retrospective, Anthony Hernandez offers a comprehensive introduction to his career of more than 40 years, tracing his evolution as well as highlighting continuities across his practice. The catalogue represents the full range and breadth of Hernandez’s work, with an extensive plate section that includes many photographs that have never before been exhibited or published.
Anthony Hernandez (born 1947) grew up in a Los Angeles far removed from the idealized Hollywood image of the city. Since 1970 Hernandez’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe. Previous solo exhibitions include Discarded: Photographs by Anthony Hernandez at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas (2016); Anthony Hernandez at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2009); and Landscapes for the Homeless at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany (1995). He has published nine monographs, including Rodeo Drive, 1984 (2012), Waiting, Sitting, Fishing and Some Automobiles: Los Angeles (2007), and Landscapes for the Homeless (1995). Hernandez currently divides his time between Los Angeles and Fairfield, Idaho.
Robert Adams is an award-winning photographer whose work has been featured in prominent public collections and exhibitions, including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Denver Art Museum; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has published more than forty books of photography and critical essays. He met Hernandez in 1974, when the two were included in a group show at the Jack Glenn Gallery in Corona del Mar, California. Adams nominated Hernandez for the 1995 Sprengel Award, sponsored by the Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany, which resulted in an exhibition and Hernandez’s first monograph, Landscapes for the Homeless.
Erin O'Toole is Baker Street Foundation Associate Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Most recently she collaborated with Leo Rubinfien and Sarah Greenough on the retrospective exhibition Garry Winogrand (2013–15), which traveled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Jeu de Paume, Paris; and the Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid. She is a contributing author of The Photographic Object, 1970 (2016), Janet Delaney: South of Market (2013), Garry Winogrand (2013), Doug Rickard: A New American Picture (2012), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: 75 Years of Looking Forward (2009), Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840–1900 (2008), and Nancy Newhall: A Literacy of Images (2008).
Ralph Rugoff is director of the Hayward Gallery, London. From 2000 to 2006 he was director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College of the Arts, where he was also founding chair of the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice. He has curated exhibitions for the past twenty-five years, including the 2015 Lyon Biennale, and has contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogues and books on artists such as David Hammons, Paul McCarthy, Raymond Pettibon, Luc Tuymans, Mike Kelley, and Anthony Hernandez (Anthony Hernandez: Pictures for Rome, 2000). In 2005 Rugoff was the inaugural recipient of the Penny McCall Foundation’s Ordway Prize for arts writer and/or curator.
Lewis Baltz (1945–2014) was a celebrated photographer and photography instructor. His work has appeared in national and international solo and group exhibitions and has entered the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Tate Modern, London, among many others. He received numerous awards over the course of his career, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Baltz met Hernandez at the home of artist and curator Fred R. Parker in 1970 and became a longtime friend.
