“It's like paradise with a lobotomy.” — Neil Simon, regarding Los Angeles

(un)real landscapes: Los Angeles plays itself 

On March 19, 2020, the Coronavirus forced Angelenos to quarantine. (un)real landscapes: Los Angeles plays itself documents this historic rupture, using photography to examine a city suddenly stilled and made unfamiliar. I experienced the subversion of my city’s landscape during permitted walks for exercise.

Even before the pandemic, Los Angeles existed in tension. Homelessness, shifting demographics, and rapid gentrification were reshaping long-established neighborhoods. The city also functions as the world's movie backlot—a constructed landscape, a site of projection and aspiration. Long poised between lived reality and staged illusion, Los Angeles, in the time of Covid, further revealed a subverted self during lockdown and a newly fragile sense of place.

The photographs were shot using a color-enhanced infrared (IR) camera (665nm). They reference Kodak’s Aerochrome infrared film, which was historically used by governments, the military, and scientists for aerial surveys of vegetation, hydrology, and land use. In these contexts, infrared reveals information invisible to the naked eye. In (un)real landscapes, infrared alters perception. It transforms familiar urban topographies, paused in time, and demonstrates nature’s persistence, often shrouded in surreality.