In addition to Gary Leonard, who we profiled in our previous biweekly newsletter, SSW has another accomplished photographer working at the Project: Ken Karagozian. When we interviewed Ken for this article, we caught him in the darkroom of his house, developing film from his most recent visit to the site. Ken prefers to take pictures with film and enjoys processing his own prints. He told us that he's old school like that.
Ken is a Los Angeles native and had two excellent LAUSD high school teachers who helped inspire his pursuit of photography. He went on to attend workshops with assistants for acclaimed photographer Ansel Adams. One of Ken’s first projects was taking pictures of the merchants at the famous Pasadena Flea Market at the Rose Bowl. Ken has a specific interest in taking candids and portraits of people in order to humanize an event or project.
One day, about twenty-five years ago, Ken was driving along Hollywood Blvd. and noticed that a familiar car wash had closed down. The business had been replaced by a construction site for the Metro Red Line. Ken was fascinated by the equipment and the workers that were tunneling seventy feet underground. He reached out to Metro for permission to take pictures at the site and was surprised to be granted access.
Even more surprising: Ken’s one-day excursion turned into a decades-long project.
Ken went on to photograph the entirety of the Red Line construction and is now photographing the Regional Connector Transit Project in Downtown Los Angeles, the Purple Line Extension in West L.A., and the Sixth Street Viaduct Replacement. He feels comfortable venturing underground, up high, or wherever he needs around the Project site looking for images that have an artistic quality worthy of hanging at an exhibit.
Ken especially likes to take group photos of the workers he meets so that they have a memento of the Project after it is completed. SSW looks forward to having Ken continue taking pictures throughout the building of the Project, but for now we’ll let him get back to his darkroom.
