In June 2024 I had the incredible opportunity to participate in a Maine Media workshop, held via Zoom, with Dr. Rebecca Senf who is the Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. The workshop, Building the Curator - Fine Art Photographer Relationship comprised of two three-hour sessions with 8 participating photographers. The workshop was amazing and I enjoyed getting to know the work of the other seven photographers.
One of the photographers was Ken Karagozian who also is from Southern California. The main body of work Ken shared was his Wilshire Subway portfolio documenting the construction of the extension of a Los Angeles subway line. I liked the work and it reminded me of New York City Iron workers who have been photographed building the skyscrapers. Everyone in the class followed one another on social media then this past May I saw an announcement on his social that he had an exhibition on Wilshire Boulevard of his subway work that was closing in a couple days so I freed up some time and headed to LA to see it while it was still up.
1301pe Gallery at 6150 Wilshire was hosting the exhibition. I have never been to this gallery before, but I was really impressed with it. The gallery and office are in an older home or duplex which was converted into a gallery space. A different gallery next door looked like that space may have been an auto repair garage. Doing some research, it appears that owner Brian Butler opened the gallery in 1992. Brian has eclectic taste and most the work he shows is not photography.
For Ken’s exhibition they used a vacant office space on Wilshire Infront of the gallery which is set back next to an awesome public parking lot.
It was different opening the door from the sidewalk and stepping immediately in to the space. The space was somewhat small and had a lot of prints but worked well I thought.
Ken’s prints are good and I appreciate how he frames images. It was a good show.
India Mandelkern was watching over the gallery, and I quickly learned that she was the author of the book “Wilshire Subway” that used Ken’s photographs to illustrate her writings (along with several others) about the Metro extension project. The book is a solid document about the project and the people who built it. The book was produced by Aurora project in Los Angeles and printed in Pasadena by Typecraft, Woods, and Jones. The reproductions are good, there are over 50 photographs, and it retails for $25. The book is available at Arcana and the LACMA bookstore at the Geffen plus other outlets. I did not hesitate to add this book to my library and made sure India autographed it. India is a historian based in the Altadena area and has plans for many more projects.
One final interesting thing I discovered in writing this post is that Ken and I had our photographs in an exhibition before. It waws in September 1994 at Gallery 777 on Figueroa in downtown Los Angeles. It was a great nonprofit gallery set aside by the builder of the building. They focused on photography and drew decent traffic from the people who worked downtown. It eventually closed but I was able to have work in three shows there.
Ken Karagozian
Website: https://www.kenkaragozian.com
Instagram: @kenkaragozian
