Another photographer loves LA

Photographer Lloyd Ziff is a former magazine design director who is working on a book of 40 years of his photographs of Los Angeles and New York. "I was a child in Beverly Hills in the 1950s, and L.A. was being built right before my dazzled eyes. Every block seemed to be a construction zone of modern two-story apartment buildings with design flourishes never seen before except perhaps on Chevy Impalas or Lincoln Premieres," he writes in a New York Times Sunday Review piece with his gallery of photos. "I try to get there a few times a year to revisit some of my childhood dreams."

Says Ziff:

Frank Lloyd Wright said, “Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles”....

I like that things change fast. Trees and cactuses and flowers that have been planted for only a few months start taking over hillsides and sidewalks. Buildings come and go, but even though the facades change, the light doesn’t. It’s often a rich yellow, with purple shadows. I still find a palm tree irresistible. I can’t help but smile at rows of roses. Bougainvillea overflowing against deep blue skies or any color stucco wall or in an alley spilling over a fence can make my day. Wright was right. Maybe you were a little crazy to come here. But driving from east to west and ending up at the ocean and then going up Pacific Coast Highway can still be magic, even though the traffic is bad and seems to always be getting worse.