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Dear Friends,

After the tremendous success of "An Intimate View of Los Angeles, Group LA 2008" that took place at MINARC / GALLERY SKART in Santa Monica, I am pleased to announce that the show will be installed at the Los Angeles Art Show, Convention Center, January 20 - 24, 2010.

My fellow GROUP LA 2008 artists include Geoffrey Baris, Larry Brownstein, Rose-Lynn Fisher, Lisa Folino, Helen K. Garber, Shelley A. Gazin, Ken Haber, Robert Hale, David Healey, Mark Indig, Judy Lawne, Nancy-Louise Jones, Marina de Leon, Donald Loze, Meg Madison, Jim McHugh, David Meltzer, Ted Meyer, Rosalyn Miles, Tom Paiva, Stuart Rapeport, Leslie Rosenthal, Hamesh Shahani, Kiet Thai, Rae Threat and Lillian Elaine Wilson. We are a consortium of 25 Los Angeles-based documentary artist - photographers, with myself as the only filmmaker. The project coordinator is photographer Helen K. Garber, who collaborated with Bergamot Station-adjacent MINARC/GALLERY SKART. Each participating photographer / filmmaker has marked their territory by documenting the neighborhood in which we reside, work or play to produce a narrative portrait - all of which have been formatted for a simultaneous looping, modular digital display, to deliver thirty unique, up-to-the-minute perspectives.

While each of us represents different socio-economic values and culturally diverse world-views, we merge with surprising equanimity as our images collide in a digital time-capsule. "We didn't realize what a pivotal year in history 2008 would turn out to be when we started in January. The incredible change in the world's economy gives the project immediate poignancy," comments Garber who envisions the project as an evolving and traveling compendium as additional photographers and their cities come on board.

The corpus of photographic work is intended not only to provide a lay-of-the-land experience for viewers, but, to articulate a new view of primal territory as urban hoods bounded and uniquely characterized by historic trajectory and socio-cultural and economic influences are illuminated to assuage our discomfort with one another. The evidence of architecture, artifact, local personality, ethnicity, the unpredictable and the otherwise invisible intersect in counterpoint to zip-coded alienation. Individually and collectively, the photographers of GROUPLA 2008 and beyond will embrace, update and preserve the experience of our topographic and ethnographically defined era through art and information archiving.

I hope to see you at the show!

Monica Gazzo


Brief Bio (for more detailed information, please refer to the Résumé page):
Monica Gazzo is a graduate from the San Francisco Art Institute (MFA). Her films have been shown at the Directors Guild of America, Hollywood, Los Angeles Filmforum, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (Egyptian Theatre, Hollywood), Melnitz Theatre at University of California, Los Angeles, New Festival at NYU, New York City, Cleveland International Film Festival, Cleveland, Ohio, MadCat Women's International Film Festival, Angels Gate Cultural Center, Anais Nin Video & Film Diary Festival, Big Sur, California, 18th Street Arts Complex, Santa Monica, Society for Cinema Studies Conference, New Orleans, LA, State University at Binhampton (SUNY), Film Arts Festival, Roxie Cinema, San Francisco; UC Theater, Berkeley, Beaubourg Pompidou Center, Paris and the London Filmmaker's Coop, amongst other venues. She has received grants from the City of Los Angeles, Cultural Affairs and Youth Services Department, Long Beach Museum of Art / Video Annex, the Ahmanson Foundation, the California Arts Council, the California Community Foundation, the Italian Cultural Institute and others. thers.

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