Interview • 104 PH

Thomas Locke Hobbs, L.A. Vedute

Los Angeles, California, USA

Please introduce yourself: What is your name, where are you from, what do you do?

I’m Thomas Locke Hobbs. I grew up in California in the 1980s and 90s and originally studied economics before getting interested in photography. I’ve lived in South America for over a decade; five years in Argentina, where I first started studying photography formally, and several more years each in Peru and Colombia, where I’ve been making work more recently.

What is your relationship with photography, and how did you get into it?

I’ve always liked looking at photographs. I’d always seek them out in museums (I always liked going to art museums, even as a kid). My father too was an amateur photographer, making slides of his many trips.

I started out as a bit of a hobbyist and autodidact but eventually pursued more formal study. When I was living in Buenos Aires in 2008-2011, I studied there with some private workshops run by local artists, including Eduardo Gil, Nacho Iasparra and Alberto Goldenstein, all really excellent artists and important early influences on my work.

I felt like I really grew and benefitted from formal instruction, so, in 2012, I returned to the United States for a few years and got an MFA at Arizona State University, where my mentors included Bill Jenkins, the curator of the original New Topographics exhibit at the George Eastman House in 1975.

What do you think triggers you to photograph in a certain moment? Is it planned or solely driven by intuition?

I’m not really driven so much by moments, altho I will often wait for the best light. I’m interested in surfaces, frames and vantage points that make interesting images that also point back towards ideas I find interesting; traces of history or physical manifestations of culture, desires and politics. I’m very interested in the landscapes of cities, the accretion of surfaces and what a photo can show or reveal about them.

I’ll often be out photographing with a specific subject in mind, but I try to be alert to my sense of intuition and the possibilities of a chance encounter leading to an interesting photograph. Hopefully I’ve brought enough film to cover both styles of working.

What is the story you want your pictures to tell?

Personally as an artist, I’m not really into making narrative-driven work. I guess I’m interested in making work that is formally interesting, surprising and even beautiful and that also shows or reveals aspects of cities’ histories as expressed in their built environments. Photos inevitably trigger stories in the minds’ of viewers. Knowing this, I can make images that can suggest or nudge viewers in certain directions regarding a narrative, but it’s not my main focus.

Which city would you like to visit the most, and why?

I’ve traveled very little in Asia. I would love to visit Tokyo and experience its sheer scale, or Hong Kong’s mix of very tall buildings and topography. If I had a time machine, I would go back and spend a week each in Ancient Rome, Tenochtitlan and Cuzco before the conquest and New York in the 1970s.

What is your personal relationship to cities, and how do you perceive them as places in general?

I like cities for their freedom, density, anonymity and subcultures. I’ve never seen the appeal of small-town life. There is really something amazing that arises from the collective efforts of so many humans living in close proximity.

Regarding your project L.A. Vedute: What was your intention, and how did you come up with the idea?

The project happened from just walking around, which is itself a somewhat radical act in Los Angeles. I kept noticing how the driveways on two adjacent apartment buildings would form this sort of collective space and how the receding lines of that space reminded me of old photographs of European cities, like those of Eugene Atget or Thomas Annan. It was a case of un-expected urbanism.

Los Angeles is typically thought of as a giant suburban sprawl without a center, but this isn’t really true. There are a lot of areas of the city that are built-up and quite densely populated. I was fascinated as well by the relationship of these pairs of adjacent buildings; how they related to each other (or not) and the unintentional shared space they created. The project is as much a study of voids as it is of buildings.

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Which project did you never finish?

There are a few projects from my first year of grad school that are best left in the drawer.

What is that one thing you have never managed to photograph and is now gone for good?

My mom passed away in 2007, before I got really serious about photography, altho I was already a hobbyist by that point. I wish I had been more diligent about documenting our house and the many decorations and designs she created. She was very creative and visual and I wish I had better records of it. In general, my only regrets are never having made more pictures sooner, of never having shot more film when I could have.

If you could travel back/forth in time, what advice would you give your younger/older self?

I really benefitted from formal instruction in photography and I wish I had done that sooner.

What do you prefer saying: «to take a photograph» or to «make a photograph», and why?

I’ve used both and I’m not dogmatic about it. I think it’s important to be deliberate in one’s approach to image making but there is something really incredible about being out in a serendipitous world with an optical machine that can take images at the press of a button.

What is the most interesting experience you have had while photographing?

I remember one time I was out working on L.A. Vedute. It was a quiet Saturday morning in winter, cool and overcast. I was somewhere in Hollywood on a residential street, near Franklin and Normandie. I had my camera set up on the tripod and the whole rig slung on my shoulder while I walked up and down the streets looking for buildings to photograph. I stopped for a moment to reflect on how good it all felt.

Everything seemed perfect, at least for me; the cool air, the clouds, being awake and alive on a quiet morning while deeply engaged in a project I cared about. I realize this is perhaps the opposite of an «interesting experience» but it’s one of my most cherished memories.

If it wasn’t for photography, what would you be interested in doing instead?

I wish I could go back to art school and do it again but in a different medium, like drawing or print making. I loved the shared sense of purpose in art school and the seriousness we all accorded each other.

How would you describe one of your pictures to a blind person?

I might start by describing the space in one of these photos; of two adjacent buildings facing each other across tight, half-excavated parking lots, the way walking down the driveway you descend a meter or two. I could attempt to describe the way sound is altered by the two buildings looming overhead. I would think about the sounds of this space like the whine of a hybrid car’s electric motor when it first starts up, the grind of gravel on pavement as its wheels start to turn, the distant whine of a gasoline powered leaf blower.

Then too, the smells of motor oil on the concrete, rotting trash from the dumpsters, and more pleasantly, the various fruit trees from the sidewalk. It occurs to me that none of these non-visual sensations are actually present in the photographs themselves and that these associations are just as easily triggered in a sighted person as well, when viewing the photo.

What are you currently working on, and—if there is—what is your next project or journey?

I’ve been taking (making?) photos of various urban landscapes in cities of South America, where I’ve been spending most of my time the last few years.

Thank you, Thomas!

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Photography: Thomas Locke Hobbs (2022)
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA

Links: Website, Instagram, L.A. Vedute

Interview • 104 PH

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Which project did you never finish?

There are a few projects from my first year of grad school that are best left in the drawer.

What is that one thing you have never managed to photograph and is now gone for good?

My mom passed away in 2007, before I got really serious about photography, altho I was already a hobbyist by that point. I wish I had been more diligent about documenting our house and the many decorations and designs she created. She was very creative and visual and I wish I had better records of it. In general, my only regrets are never having made more pictures sooner, of never having shot more film when I could have.

If you could travel back/forth in time, what advice would you give your younger/older self?

I really benefitted from formal instruction in photography and I wish I had done that sooner.

What do you prefer saying: «to take a photograph» or to «make a photograph», and why?

I’ve used both and I’m not dogmatic about it. I think it’s important to be deliberate in one’s approach to image making but there is something really incredible about being out in a serendipitous world with an optical machine that can take images at the press of a button.

What is the most interesting experience you have had while photographing?

I remember one time I was out working on L.A. Vedute. It was a quiet Saturday morning in winter, cool and overcast. I was somewhere in Hollywood on a residential street, near Franklin and Normandie. I had my camera set up on the tripod and the whole rig slung on my shoulder while I walked up and down the streets looking for buildings to photograph. I stopped for a moment to reflect on how good it all felt.

Everything seemed perfect, at least for me; the cool air, the clouds, being awake and alive on a quiet morning while deeply engaged in a project I cared about. I realize this is perhaps the opposite of an «interesting experience» but it’s one of my most cherished memories.