One day last summer, while average Californians were lazing poolside or flipping burgers on the backyard grill, Thomas Alleman was cruising a run-down section of Hollywood. He was searching for things to photograph. Alongside sat his toy Holga camera, with which he created “Sunshine and Noir,” a series that presented a decidedly unglamorous vision of Los Angeles.
On Fountain Avenue, Mr. Alleman noticed a billboard for the local clothing manufacturer American Apparel. That he took notice of the billboard is not itself surprising, because the company has drawn extensive news coverage — several ads have been banned in the United Kingdom — for featuring highly sexualized, young, real-girl models. Defying — or enraging — its critics, the company also maintains a page on its website featuring stills and animated gifs of many of the pictures.
Mr. Alleman’s attention was drawn to the four repeating photos in the advertisement, which perfectly matched four identical satellite dishes nearby. Unfortunately, he was busy and couldn’t return for a week, during which he fretted that the company would change the billboard before he could get back.
When he returned, he found that the image was still there for the making, and decided to shoot it with a Mamiya medium-format camera, a sharp lens and some color film. He was happy with the experimental color picture, even though it didn’t fit with his existing black-and-white series. From there, his photographic, hunter-gatherer instincts kicked in, and he kept tracking down more billboards.
Thomas Alleman The photographs became a series, “The American Apparel,” its name homage to Lee Friedlander’s seminal 1976 project, “The American Monument.” Mr. Alleman was inspired by Mr. Friedlander’s ability to depict “the chaos he corrals through his lens.” Mr. Alleman hoped to communicate his own obsession with the seedy, worn-down, visually complex world of street life in Los Angeles.
“I’m a true believer,” he said. “I proselytize, and I want to show people that this is what it actually looks like here.”
This Los Angeles is the perfect stage to have the controversial billboards as a backdrop. They coexist with crooked lamp posts, jagged steel fences, razor-ribboned fences, telephone poles, people waiting for the bus, graffiti and cheap burger joints. The pictures capture haphazard construction, a sprawling world of concrete and desperation. Mr. Alleman attributes the city’s disorder of to its inherent ungovernability: it’s just too big and corrupt to manage properly.
As he continued his quest, he began to think of American Apparel’s ad campaign as a protracted performance art piece. He referred to the ’70s art movement, in which the photographic evidence of “happenings” ultimately became a stand-in for the work itself. He wondered if he wasn’t the lone witness for this extensive endeavor, a silent collaborator, documenting the billboards for posterity.
But Mr. Alleman is also aware of his role in perpetuating a type of image that has often been criticized for objectifying women and sexualizing children. He says his photos are meant to raise questions for viewers rather than to provide answers. He does acknowledge, though, that he is intrigued by American Apparel’s opaque intentions.
He sees the billboards as “insurgent” advertising, with the use of amateur models and awkward, uncomfortable poses. Americans will accept anything, he believes, if it has proper production values, but these ads have “the porn-y look of this 16-year-old, apparently, being photographed by Uncle Julius in the basement.”
The more he photographs these billboards, the more he wonders if we aren’t most disquieted by the inference that, in a postfeminist world, it still isn’t acceptable for the models to choose to engage in the process. Can they not make their own decisions about sexuality, as descendants of media manipulators like Madonna? He asked, rhetorically, “Are we a little creeped out by these pictures because these are confident women who are empowered, who seem to be in charge of what’s happening to them?”
That’s just one of the questions Mr. Alleman would like to ask someone at American Apparel, if presented the opportunity. He came close to getting some answers one day as he drove to the airport shortly after dawn. He had just passed a billboard he had been meaning to shoot and had a premonition it would be gone by the time he returned to Los Angeles. So he pulled over to the side of the road and hauled out his gear.
Sure enough, a truck pulled up, and a man emerged, ready to put up a new image for the week. Mr. Alleman tried to ask a few questions, but he didn’t get very far. As excited as he was, he wasn’t able to elicit much information. “If I had a choice, in the moment, to hang out with Tom Hanks or this guy, I’m going with this guy,” he said. Still, he hopes to get another chance to chat with someone from the company, so his curiosity can be put to rest.
“Their operation is of interest to me,” he said. “I’d be delighted to learn more about it. Just from a guy with a clipboard and a cellphone who’s standing on a street corner.”
Thomas Alleman Jonathan Blaustein is an artist and writer based in New Mexico. He contributes regularly to the blog A Photo Editor, and you can follow him — @jblauphoto — and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.
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