Beth Chucker is originally from the Washington, DC area. She received a BFA from both The Corcoran College of Art and Design 1994 and the Art Center College of Design with Honors 2004. In 2009 she received an MFA from ICP-Bard in New York City. Beth has curated many shows in Los Angeles and in DC. Her work was selected by Kira Pollack, Time Magazine’s Director of Photography for Photography Now 2013, and Center for Photography Woodstock. She taught photography at colleges including the Art Institute of California North Hollywood and New York Film Academy in Los Angeles, until the birth of her twins. She continues to create new work and participate in the art and design community in Montclair, NJ where she lives with her family.
Stroll Los Angeles
Beth extracts from her immediate world to build an intimate photographic portrait of the familial and surrounding neighborhood. “Stroll Los Angeles” is the meditation that presented itself when her twins were still in the stroller and she would walk around her Los Angeles neighborhood, with her Fuji 645 or Mamiya 7 film camera, loaded with old 120 film. Los Angeles is constantly being erased and reconstructed as many cities and towns are, with new development. But there is embedded history in the tragic yet glamorous mystique to LA’s neighborhoods. Weaving up and down, east and west with the stroller, the spirits of the past still exist even after the erasure. The other subject of this essay is the mysterious and anonymous people centered in the images. She purposefully photographs most of them from behind, in a stalking manner. By isolating the physical mannerisms and dress of these individuals, she arranges subtle evidence to the viewer to create a personal narrative that provides a speculative emotional context that perhaps a direct portrait can not always convey. This also allows the subject to be blended into the “tragic, glamorous mystique” of the LA neighborhood landscapes.
This project right now consists of around 123 images, all taken in the Los Angeles neighborhood around Fairfax Ave in West Hollywood.
To view more of Beth Chucker’s work please visit her website.