This book gathers together a series of photographs taken by Benjamin Acree, Jackson Eaton and Robert S. Johnson, as they collectively passed through the United States in 2009. What is initially striking in these images is the very absence of the cultivated, dominant images, we all, as everyday consumers of imagery and photography, have as archetypes of Malibu Beach: there are no glimmering building facades, no sun-baked, oil-glistening skin, no lines of palm trees in crepuscular light. It is this absence that defines the collection; an absence which does not attempt to signify the sanctity of the condition, but provides, determinedly, its own portrait of the Real …. The photographers never presume the unfamiliar, they reveal it, they have passed through the catastrophe, have borne witness to violence of everyday life and have amassed it before us. They have given this to us, through their experiences, through their habit of seeing, they have experienced it and have laid out their attendant figures in this book. – Matthew Hall
To view more of Jackson’s work please visit his website.
Coney Island Malibu Beach is available for purchase here.