Featuring over 90 exhibitors, Photo LA – the 23rd annual international Los Angeles photographic show – is back.  The largest West Coast photo exhibition is on now through the weekend at its new home in the LA Mart in downtown Los Angeles.  Lots of contemporary work, vintage stuff, I do wish they did include more of the Tumblr/Instagram-driven photographers’ generation. As strange as that sounds, they are representing a new direction and different perspective on modern photo.  But I also understand that the gallery platform for that culture doesn’t quite exist yet.

It’s always nice to see photography respected and appreciated by the art community, because that wasn’t always the case.  Just because the visual output is manipulated by machine, doesn’t lessen or devalue the human touch and inspiration that goes into the work.  The same can be said of a computer’s Wacom™ tablet, a potter’s wheel, a painter’s brush.  These are all just tools to help us communicate our story to the rest of the world.

Jay Mark Johnson’s “Costantino Sott Acqua 2” is the centerpiece of the exhibition.  His technique is fascinating, manipulating a specific camera to stay anchored in place and record a visual timeline of a scene, splicing up the images and stitching them together into a seamless blend.

Here are just a few other pieces of art you’ll be able to find at this year’s Photo LA, which closes this weekend!