Picture Show: Traffic!
- Posted by: GOOD
- on April 29, 2009 at 8:00 am
The French writer and philosopher Jean Baudrillard once wrote of the freeways of Los Angeles as being “ideally suited to the only truly profound pleasure, that of keeping on the move.” Indeed, nowhere is the pleasure of keeping on the move more profound than in a city whose freeways rarely offer it.
Rush hour in Los Angeles is synonymous with gridlock, but the sheer enormity of the situation can be tough to grasp. Fortunately, there is the architecture photographer Benny Chan, whose Traffic! series depicts the scale of overcrowded lanes of rush hour traffic from high overhead. Shot over a few years during various helicopter trips, the photographs now stand eight feet high and six feet wide, and convey, quite effectively, the enormity of the problem—as well as the need to get things moving.
Traffic! will show at the Pasadena Museum of California from May 31 through September 20. An opening event will be held on the 30th. What follows is a selection of Mr. Chan’s work. Click each image to (dramatically) enlarge.
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DISCUSSION: 43 Comments
I’ve been to LA before, and I will NEVER drive there again. Not sure why folks there even prefer to drive in the first place!
What a depressing, miserable landscape.
It’s only depressing and miserable for the depressing and miserable.
some of my best moments in LA have been driving on the freeway late at night (with not traffic), secretly it is fun and liberating
Beautiful in the aerial abstract (like most things), but ugly and filthy on the ground.My main memory of passing through LA involves starting from North to South on I-5 at 4 am. I saw burning barrels on the side of the road, a car on fire, what looked like a few dead dogs near Disneyland (and more elsewhere), and lots and lots of very unhappy and angry people stuck in their cars. I was unsure I hadn’t inadvertently died and ended up in Hell. I was glad to finally leave it behind by 2pm. Any transportation “solution” that takes that long to cross a valley isn’t a very good one.I’m imagining that all those vehicles are people riding their bikes… Ahhhhhh, much better! Now we just need to get some trees and gardens amongst those lanes, maybe even a light rail line or two!
Here’s to the hope that these photos will be the records of museums of how we once built our cities — and that this infrastructure will one day be a relic of the past.
I’ve lived in a lot of different places in my life. I’ve traveled widely in the US and abroad. Say what you will about Los Angeles; but while I’ve enjoyed my travels and living in other cities, every time I’ve flown over this sprawling megapolis toward a landing at LAX, I’m always happy to be home. Freeways, traffic and congestion are just part of the bargain when you want to live in one of the world’s great centers of commerce, technology and culture. Few places in the world offer the breadth of opportunity and diversity of peoples and cultures that is here in this truly international city.
yeah, i actually live in L.A. and i recognize most of these areas like the Getty museum , la convention center and usc/exposition park. but traffic is bad it’s what us angelino’s are know for but it’s totally worth the weather beaches nightlife and ubundance if things to do
I love living in LA, but it sure would be nicer without freeways.
LA just one of many great world cities- but if you keep justifying the traffic situation it will never improve- there are plenty good examples to learn from…
As much as I hate the traffic and the freeways in LA, it is impossible for Angelinos to get some bikes and bike around town. If I wanted to get from Santa Monica to the Getty, it would take days on a bike (even with proper biking infrastructure). And it doesn’t help that LA’s metro system only has 4 horribly laid out lines.
The problem lies within the infrastructure of Los Angeles. We are a city built around the freeways. Effective methods of public transportation, such as a city wide subway, would require a complete restructuring of the city. The question is whether or not the time and money would be worth it.
The problem lies within people, each one of us feel the need to have our own separate car. We are so self centered that we don’t even think of taking someone with us.
There are ways around LA with a bike. In fact I commuted from the south side of Santa Monica to a job just down the street from the Getty every day for a couple of years: it took me 45 minutes to work and 35 home. It did involve a semi-secret route through the V.A. grounds…and LA’s transit system is under-rated. I lived in LA for 8 years without a driver’s license and did quite well. I still missed it.
LA has lots of traffic becsue it is so spread out, to the point that you need a car. If you look at its downtown compared to other downtowns, its alot less dense.
Alweg offered to build a monorail system in L.A. like the one in Seattle (still the only public system in the country that’s covered both its capital and O&M costs). Ray Bradbury’s still angry about it.
wat a weste of time, wy do they don’t use the Public Transport’s? (not the bus, the bus also is cath on traffic)
Los Angeles is a wonderful, west-coast city. I don’t support sprawl, but it’s geography – with it’s long coastline, expansive basin, valleys and canyons, and extremely livable suburbs – lends to a layout in which the most possible utilily comes from linking together hundreds of smaller munipalities. Any other American city transplanted into southern California would not do the Pacific Ocean justice. A claustrophobic arrangement like New York City would kill the free, open mindset of southern California. Downtown L.A. has tall buildings and people hate going there because it’s too shady, too corporate, and frankly dirtier than any other commercial center in the city. Communities may become more local, but Los Angeles will never surrender it’s free and open identity.
MAN! Theats alot of traffic! I like traffic though.
Me Gusta! :]That is definitely a lot of traffic though :\
Are these kinds of total gridlock situations a daily occurance or just every now and then? Cities even bigger than LA in europe and asia have traffic problems, but not on such a huge scale. London, Tokyo, Paris, and Rome all have huge traffic volumes. But take London for example, the city has 4 rapid transit systems; the underground; the docklands light-rail; the south London tram system and the bus service. All of these are linked by the Oyster card system which allows flexible payment, making running a car seem pointless. If LA wants to solve it’s traffic problems it can, but will it want to give up the car?
we talk about tobacco being a lung problem. tell me that all that exhaust is worse for our lungs.
O_O
The funny thing is that I bet most of the people here who have said it looks horrible and would hate to live somewhere like that, live in a big american city, or at least in the suburbs and drive their cars on a big congested freeway, and then have the guts to look at the pictures in disgust.I think LA is the city of the automobile, like Detroit, where they are made, LA is where the cars are driven. If all the cars ran on hydrogen or electricity then I suppose it would be healthier, but the traffic will always be there because that is how every major city has being built, the car will be king for at least another 100 years
Wow it don’t look nothing like in TV,that’s a disaster .im happy that my city don’t have such traffic but we do have a lot of old infrastructure ,so it heading that way.