In LA’s Hall of Records, New Artworks Look to the Past and Future
Teresa Baker and Felix Quintana’s recently unveiled commissions make visible some of the city’s overlooked communities and places.
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The work includes his own photographs of people and places that hold personal meaning, with images drawn from the vast archives of the DRP: an aerial shot of Lakewood, a model post-war planned community in LA County; the now-defunct Compton Fashion Center, a swap meet and hip-hop mecca where NWA sold their first cassette tapes, immortalized in videos by Tupac and Kendrick Lamar; a photo of his grandmother crocheting; the iconic Watts Towers; an artwork by prolific LA graffiti artist Hopes; a nearly century-old photo of people playing soccer in MacArthur Park, as they still do today.
“The piece is kind of like a flattening of the past, present, and, hopefully, a little bit about the future of LA, the way I see it,” Quintana noted. He also incorporated community photos taken at three pop-up portrait studios he staged with LAND in Boyle Heights, Watts, and at the DRP offices.
As did Baker, Quintana had to contend with conservation issues, given that he regularly uses a cyanotype photographic process, which produces monochromatic blue images that can fade when exposed to light. He scanned his original cyanotypes, digitally collaging them to arrive at the final archival pigment print.
The Hall of Records was designed in 1962 by famed architect Richard Neutra, who called it “the world’s largest filing cabinet.” Although most of its archives have since been moved offsite, it still represents the recorded history of LA, what civic leaders decided was important enough to remember, while the Department of Regional Planning shapes the city’s future.
Baker recalled that there was initially a disconnect between the literal, pragmatic way DRP employees conceived of the city, its spaces, and people and the non-representational geometries, lines, and colors in her work. But “they were open to that at the end,” Baker explained.
“I was surprised because it is very abstract, so it’s exciting that they want it to live here,” she said.
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