This is just one example of Los Angeles' changing urban landscape as seen in a new exhibition of photographs at the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. While the poor and homeless have long served as poignant subject matter for photographers, Vergara focuses on the urban environment of ghettoes, how they change over time, and how they reflect the lives of the people who inhabit them. Here, openness coexists with closure.
Fortresses surrounded by spiky fences sit next to colorful vernacular structures.
In his photographs of Los Angeles, Vergara captures the ongoing impact of the 1992 riots on buildings in South Central, the complex economy of downtown's Skid Row, and the transformation of traditionally African-American communities by the recent influx of new inhabitants of Latino descent. Vergara, born and raised in Chile, came to the United States in 1965 to study at the University of Notre Dame. He received a master's degree in sociology from Columbia University and the Revson Fellowship at Columbia University's School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. His photographs have been exhibited at the National Building Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, the Queens Museum of Art and elsewhere. He has written about urban issues for several publications, most notably The Nation.