John Humble’s Sunday Afternoon: A pre-pandemic study of industrial solitude in a post-pandemic world
By MARRIE STONE
For the past few years, John Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows has earned a permanent place on my nightstand. The little black book contains hundreds of words invented by Koenig that give voice to those niggling, amorphous emotions we all feel but don’t know how to express. Whenever I read one, I’m struck anew. Someone else had that weird thought too.
Most of his definitions contain at least a trace – if not an outright punch – of melancholy. No surprise Koenig published the dictionary in November 2021, over a year into the pandemic. It became an instant New York Times bestseller, and a useful tool for many to process what they were experiencing and feel less alone. Who knew humans could feel so much and talk about it so little? Often, I think it’s because we lack the accurate language (whether that language be words, images, music or any number of ways artists are able to reflect our private thoughts and fears back at us).
At the center of Obscure Sorrows sits the word “latigo.” Koenig defines it as: “A dizzying sense of awe at the sheer scale of modern society – looking out at a city so vast and complex it can barely be mapped, with millions of miles of roads and power lines and water mains that must be continually repaired and replaced every few years, feeding a labyrinth of supply chains and regulations and contracts and algorithms – a system so massive that individual people seem almost beside the point, that if everybody were to vanish all at once, the city would sigh and carry on its business.”
(Sounds pretty post-pandemic dystopian, doesn’t it?)
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
“Sunday Afternoon,” a collection of seven photographs by John Humble, will be on display at the Laguna Art Museum through March 2025
If latigo was translated into images, they might look a lot like John Humble’s Sunday Afternoon, a collection of two dozen photographs taken in industrial areas near the Port of Los Angeles back in 2006. Humble drilled down into that modern society to the power lines and train tracks. He exposed chain link fences topped with barbed wire, empty alleys and bulging garbage bins. He photographed shipping containers and warehouses, cranes and cargo terminals. In Humble’s lens, every day was sunny with bright blue skies. He captured the usually bustling streets of L.A.’s port, and all the infrastructure that supports it, in suspended animation. Not a person in sight. Sound familiar?
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Photo by John Humble
“View East, 1300 block of Willow St., Los Angeles, September 26, 2005.” All photographs are 40” x 60”.
Humble’s images seem to ask a subtle question – what would our human-made world look like without all those humans who made it? It’s a question that takes on more poignancy today – post-pandemic – than it did when the images were created nearly two decades ago. While Humble had to patiently wait for those streets to empty in 2006, shooting only on Sunday afternoons, we all remember too well what real emptiness felt like. That makes encountering these images today a far different experience than it would have been when they were made.
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Photo by John Humble
“2600 Block, E. 26th St., Vernon, September 26, 2005”
Seven of these photographs are currently on display at the Laguna Art Museum as part of their broader exhibition of newly acquired work. The show, entitled Latest and Greatest: New Work at Laguna Art Museum, will run through March 2025.
Humble’s project began back in the 1980s when The National Endowment of the Arts awarded a grant to a group of photographers to do a documentary survey of Los Angeles. “Once I started doing it, I got really interested in it,” Humble said. “I’ve been continuing to do it pretty much to this day.” He has several collections of work spanning the last 50 years. He documented the Los Angeles River, L.A.’s freeways, Pico Boulevard, Venice Beach, DTLA and elsewhere. The images, like Koenig’s dictionary, are full of despair and melancholy. They expose the city’s underbelly, those darker recesses that lie not far away from the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles’ ritzier suburbs.
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Photo by John Humble
“800 Block of Barracuda St., Terminal Island, April 16, 2006”
Humble discovered his love for photography in Vietnam, where he was stationed as a medic in 1967. He picked up his first camera at the PX and began taking pictures of everything he saw. “One of the captains was also very much into photography,” Humble said. “He had a darkroom set up in his hooch and invited me to come develop my film.”
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When Humble returned from the war, he became a photographer for his college newspaper at the University of Maryland and then went to work for the Washington Post.
“After working for them for a short time, I realized that wasn’t what I wanted to do. That’s when I decided to get an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and began teaching in Southern California,” he said. Humble also worked for several national magazines including Newsweek, U.S. News, Time and others.
He moved to Los Angeles in 1974 and has been documenting the city – its architecture and infrastructure, its homes and billboards, businesses and industries – ever since. “I was told that if there weren’t any power wires, I wouldn’t have a body of work,” Humble said. “I tend to use them on a regular basis in designing my pictures. They’re wonderful for filling the sky.”
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Photo by John Humble
“6100 Block of Scott Way, Commerce, July 2, 2006”
Humble’s photos are hard fought, especially after 9/11. Turns out, the Port Authority doesn’t appreciate photographers documenting the city’s infrastructure. Cops are called on a regular basis. “It’s fine with me,” he said. “I tell them, ‘Your concern is my concern, so it’s not an issue.’ I explain what I’m doing and then they don’t have a problem with it. I mean, how many terrorists would come down there and set up a 4 by 5 camera in the middle of the street? We shake hands and leave as friends.” Until the next time.
Like any photographer, Humble is on the lookout for strong composition. He’s drawn to the intense shadows and vivid colors, the industrial machinery against the fluffy clouds. “All of it attracted me,” he said of one image. “It was late afternoon, so I was able to get those shadows. I looked down the street and thought it was pretty interesting to look at.”
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Photo by John Humble
“Esperanza Street at Emery Street, Los Angeles, March 19, 2006”
Humble’s hyper-realistic approach gives the viewer a sense of looking through a window instead of a picture frame. He adds to that emotion by mounting the images directly onto the plexiglass, a process known as face mounting. It has the effect of putting the viewer inside the scene instead of at a remove and heightens the sense of realism. It also feels like a little time travel, sucking us psychologically back to the summer of 2020 when the sun baked these empty streets.
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Photo by John Humble
“2500 Block of E. Grant St., Long Beach, May 21, 2006”
One afternoon in May 2020, I drove down the Las Vegas Strip. Mine was the only car on the road. Every casino was locked tight, surrounded by chain link fences with signs posted at regular intervals warning the public to keep out. Windows were boarded up and all the traffic signals flashed red. It felt like some apocalyptic film.
Standing in LAM’s basement, that sensation was instantly accessible. Of course, that wasn’t Humble’s intent. His images predate that day by decades. But perhaps that’s what distinguishes fine art from documentary photography – its ability to evoke an emotional response across time and space in its viewer.
Here’s another word from Koenig’s dictionary – “moledro.” It’s defined as “a feeling of resonant connection with an author or artist you’ll never meet, who may have lived centuries ago and thousands of miles away but can still get inside your head and leave behind morsels of their experience, like the little piles of stones left by hikers that mark a hidden path through unfamiliar territory.”
Isn’t that art’s purpose? Offering opportunities to wander inside another’s mind, making resonant connections and feeling kinship in our many obscure sorrows.
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Courtesy of John Humble
John Humble has been living, working and photographing in Los Angeles since 1974
John Humble’s Sunday Afternoon, alongside Latest and Greatest: New Work at Laguna Art Museum, will run at the Laguna Art Museum through March 2025. For more information, visit their website here.
