Larger than life

- Mirko Martin, LA Crash

“On foot or by car, Martin kept moving along the streets, from Venice Beach to the Hollywood Hills, from downtown to East L.A., creating a portrait of the city that has become a hologram of the film industry. Martin’s photo series, L.A. Crash, cryptically subverts the established clichés and images streaming out of the flood of media: panoramas of burning high-rises, uniformed cops handcuffing African-American gangsters, graffiti-covered courtyards, or lethargic homeless people on the sidewalk.

[...]

He mixes shots of actual streets with motifs from film productions (including costumed actors and staged disasters), which he happens to come across in public. However, the question of what is authentic and what is constructed always remains open. This blurs the line between documentary and staged photography.”

Taken from Sarah Frost, Where is the Cinema?, in: Hilke Wagner, Kunstverein Braunschweig (Ed.), Mirko Martin - Marginal Stories, Exhibition catalogue, Remise of the Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany 2009.


Now on show within the exhibition Bumpy Ride, curated by Paul Wombell, Fotografia Festival, Rome, Italy, September 24 - October 24, 2010.


All images © Mirko Martin