In Amsterdam last year, the culture of present day Los Angeles was uniquely represented through a series of images taken by Dutch photographer Monica Nouwens.
For the Angelenos who were about 6,000 miles too far away to appreciate the exhibition, Nouwens will be speaking next Thursday, Jan. 8, at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City about her project “Look at Me and Tell Me if You Have Known Me Before,” which was on display at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam last summer.
In this Los Angeles-focused photography exhibit, Nouwens aims to genuinely capture the lifestyle of a young generation working and playing in the city.
Her subjects are of a hip, trendy crowd living against a financially and morally strained backdrop that is characteristic of such a huge metropolitan destination. Nouwens captures a group of people who have left a prominent customer culture behind in search of a personal, poetic, and smaller-scale alternative.
Through her photos, Nouwens offers an image of the romantic and fleeting nature of her subjects’ lives as she captures them out and about at gatherings and parties in the city. The pictures provide a potential sense of broader insight into the relationships between the city-dwellers and their urban environment.
Overall, Nouwens seeks to create a glimpse of a collective mindset that is reflective of the hopes and fears of an entire generation.
Nouwens has always been enthralled by the wealth of social manifestation in cities and has accordingly developed into an involved insider from a former outside observer. In response, Nouwens was able to form the basis for “Look at Me and Tell Me if You Have Known Me Before,” in which her artistic vision and experience in the city fuse together and manifest through photography.
Nouwens is also a featured photographer in the current Annenberg Space exhibit “Sink or Swim: Designing for a Sea Change.” In recent years her works have been on display at MOCA in Los Angeles and in various museums in Amsterdam. Some of her clients include Levi’s, Prada, and Salvatore Ferragamo.
For more information on Nouwens’ upcoming lecture, call 213.403.3000 or visit annenbergphotospace.org.
