The Los Angeles River, as we have come to know it, is a concrete channel that connects the mountains of the San Fernando Valley to the mouth of the Pacific Ocean via Long Beach. Classified as a flood control channel, the river mainly serves to transport rainwater, snow runoff, sewage, and anything else in its path from the city to the ocean. Out of sight, out of mind.
This project began as an accident. In walking around the river during the pandemic, while everything was closed, I found a plastic toy of a couple riding a neon motorcycle. I felt a surprising kinship: perhaps it was the call of childhood, or maybe the toy awakened a subconscious desire to drive a motorcycle with a beautiful woman riding on the back. I began making return visits to the river to find what I could. There’s a stretch, around five miles long from Burbank to Dodger Stadium, where I discovered everything from cowboy boots and DVDs to house keys. Funneled through the sewer system, these objects became silent witness to the river’s passage. They had emerged as blank slates after their baptism, devoid of history or ownership until I snagged them and took them to my studio to photograph.
It became an obsession. Friends made wisecracks about my hobby. “Where’s Justin?” “Oh, probably fishing hubcaps out of the river again.” They weren’t wrong. But after a few months, having traversed the river again and again, I found I had exhausted the river of its gifts. And so for now, I wait for the rain and the runoff, hoping for another storm to flood the river with trash from the streets before I can start the series anew.
