'Near Mirroring' - Limited Edition of 17 Photograph

This is LAs historic and famous Famers Market on the West Side adjacent to 'The Grove'; a famous, trendy outdoor shopping mall., both in West LA off Fairfax Farmers Market is a large historic structure and area devoted mostly to shops, kiosks and stands dedicated to food, food, purchased as groceries, meat and produce or consumed on premises from numerous and various ethnic cuisines. This seated woman reading newspaper is Jewish, one of a large number of daily visitors from LA's portion of the diaspora to this food centered mall preserved almost frozen in time as a historic structure and enterprise from a much earlier time. Visitors and attendees essentially step back in time. The mall is full of vendors selling many things,with food predominating. Old fashioned butcher shops sell meat on butcher paper and bind string to hold together rolled roasts to specification, while a wealth of fabuolous food stalls, vend almost a world of cuisines for consumption on premises. Ethic cuisine then featured food of various nations, vended by cooks at stalls selling the cuisine of their home land. Middle Eastern meals, compete with Hispanic, French, Brazlian BBQ buffet, and even 'fun food' that is more apt to be found in a carneval,; items such as funnel cake, hot dogs and similar products in a food court. Booths and counters sell French crepes, Chinese food, and other oriental food, along with a variety of foods from around the world. It's a foodie's delight and home also to junk food aficionados. First class produce is sold from wonderfly stocked bins and counters, other groceries are vended elsewhere, and the two butcher shops sell premiums meats prepared with love and great skill, all without any plastic wrapping -- just butcher paper handed fresh-wrapped over the counter top. Butchers there are highly skilled meat cutters, not just clerks who attach labels to prepacked meats now is commom in supermarkets. For news junkies, there is a world class news vendor with newspapers from nearly all the nation's cities and magazines of all sorts. On Fridays especially when commerce stopped during the last recession, Angelenos and tourists mixed in long lines at the Brazilian BBQ featuring South American styled buffet featuring famous Brazilian barbecue in the slow-cooked open fire manner of Brazil and Argentina's famous BBQ restaurants. ]Two restaurants anchor the market's West end on LA"s famous Fairfax. One, Du Pars, is famous in LA and even though the USA for its old fashioned country cooking including staples such as colrn beef hash, country dinners and its famous fluffy pancakes. The restaurant was featured predominantly on Amazon Prime TV's 'Bosch' crime series about fictitional LA homicide detective Hieronymous Bosch. Bosch told friends and even his daughter about the restaurant's unique and justly famous fluffy pancakes Bosch's wife was murdered by the 'mob' before cameras in the market's parking lot. after a visit. On the nearby northwest corner is a trendy coffee shop/diner open late almost all nights that draws from the West Side, all LA, and tourist crowds. The history of Farmers Market is complemented by the trendy, modern and upscale outdoor mall next door, 'The Grove' that bustles with well off native and tourist shoppers through LA's warmish nights. So, often part of a tourist visit may be devoted to the past endshrined in the frozen-in-amber ambiance of 'Farmers Market' followed to one of the country's most upscale and trendy malls, 'The Grove' which features enteratinment and a lush ambiance, all open air. Farmers' Market is a huge, lightly walled in enclosure with large interior spaces and a paucity of divider walls with one area easily leading to others. Ordinary groceries are less bountiful than exotic and/or regional specialty sold by food vendors, butchers shops and others, the entire market is a specialty cuisine zone. trather than a Walmart of Safeway. The market is arranged for easy travel down aisles to its various areas. The South side has a few enclosed stores, and a Starbucks. Places to sit, rest and hopefully to have good food abound. On the West side an indoor withstools overlooking the dining area bar caters to the thirsty. Entertainment is overlooked by various restaurants and the bar on the West (Fairfax) interior. A world class (and somewhat pricey) produce stand is adjacent to a (similarly pricey but famous) counter service butcher shop on the Northwest side. Both are near a dedicated news seller similar to those found in New York City and certrain airports all of which feature newspapers from home towns all over the US and the world plus a huge supply of sometimes hard-to-get magazines. In the western most food court/dining area on weekend nigfhts there is live enterainment, from bands and often from vocalists, sometimes famous. Farmers Market is almost next door to CBS 'studio city' and CBS has for decades provided a willing clientele from its workers, vendors and employees. There often are celebrities, worthy to me not as photo subjects, ,but for observing how easily these famous persons move about and how Angelenos treat them as 'ordinary'. Entertainment is the industry of LA and its numerous I don't wish to take photos of peoplewhere the depiction of the celebrated person causes the photos to have monetary or artistic value. I prefer to exclude celebrities from my photos UNLESS they are to be captured and shown in an artistic manner that takes advantage of their inherent worth as humans. Celebrities whose images were worthy for artistry have ranged from Richard Nixon (reaching down to a sidewalk freight elevator arising rapidly which seconds before was obscured by two covering metal plates that formed part of the sidewalk that opened only for freight deliveries. As the freight elevator rose, it might have been a terrorist with an Uzi, there on San Francisco's famous Powell Street in 1969. Instead it was a truck deliveryman with a hand truck and some boxes, arising on that below-sidewalk freight elevator arising after his delivery of goods to a hotel, and reaedy to put his hand carts/trucks into his waiting trruck. Instead, arising he saw the president reachingdown the opsidewalk opening and offered his hand back. The secret service carried me down the sidwalk away from the president, two men with shades and earpieces holding the then-more-slender me, upright bytheir hands under my armpits. Secret Service deposited me down the sidewalk in front of the president's hotel; the president came and to shake hands behind me, reached around my waist to shake those hands while, camera held over my head, i recoreded that all. I was not there to take unique photos of a president working a crowd (and being confronted by an event that easily could have been terroristic but wasn't). (Nowdays manholes and such elevators in a president's known path are inspected AMD welded shut, possibly because of that incident. I always carried a camera, and I was on my way walking to work at,my new job as a 'newsman' at San Francisco's Associated Press bureau farther along on market street. I didn't even recall the president was to be in town and had no inkling I would run across a world class street, news and documentary photo opportunity. I have little interest shooting as I do, taking photos of 'famous' people to capture their fame. if Kirk Douglas, even then very old, walks to the urinal next to mine, as has happened at the market, I disregard that. He has a right to his privacy. if paparazzi shout to me, the guy with a camera, to take a photo of Heidi Klum to sell to tabloids or tabloid TV for 'lots of money' I just refuse, as i also have,. I won't take the photo just for money, I'm not in that bueisnss. At the eastern dining area of the Farmers Market, daily the area becomes filled by 'regulars'. These are older Jews from LA and LA's nearby Westside, which ha sa large Jewish population. These older Jews sit, eat (often food and sandwiches they brought to the court,) and kibbitz. There most know each other. Many friends sit at tables, others cruise bwetween groups of friends and relativs. Stories abount. Strangers, such asthis goyim are sometimes invited and welcome. Thiks woman is one of the daily older Jews who populate the eastern food court's dining area. She is fully involved reading her newspaper. Her arms and hands are held 'just do'. Her visage is obscured by the newspaper she is devouring. The young girl at the window has her life in front of her. She also holds her arms and hands in a simiklar fashion, ut her face is not obscured. She is curious. She has to learn her tastes and learn how to fulfill her curiosity. The older woman has done that and at least temporarily has shut ofrf the near wolrd to travel the world in news stories. The young girl seems to be quite curious, but she has not reached the level where she shuts things out. Although the window shuts her off physically fron provceeding forward, that's all. She can view ahead -- figuratively the 'future'. Only her age impedes her curiosity from fulfilllment. The older woman, reading, arms and hands held similarly, has attained her maturity and no longer needs to look at all. Note also that the arms and hands of each female are held in a simlar fashion, not olnly in the attitude of arms and fists to the person, but also the arms and fists and person is set against a quadrangle, a four-sided background. The older woman's quadrangle is the newpaper she is holding,which obscures her face and demands her attention. The girls quadrangle is the four sides of the window through which she gazes, and which allows us to view her but prevents forward movement, physically and symbolically. These similar but also disparate views and attitudes of each are symbolically illustrative to me of each of their progress thgoughn life's stages. Whjen I first evaluated this image, I wondered, as I sometimes do 'Why did I take this image and why the precise composition?' The anser to me is fairly complex, but true to my intentions. I often 'see' things I do not fully understand until far later. As here. John (Crosley) © 2009, all rights reserved. John Crosley. No reproduction or other use without express prior written permission.of image and/or text.

Photography:Black & White on Paper

Artist Produced Limited Edition of:17

Size:40 W x 26.6 H x 0.1 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.