Urban Tomographies. Martin H. Krieger

fabric.

Figure 8. Clarence Street, Pico-Aliso district, Los Angeles (Figure 1A and B, #2).

      The Pico-Aliso district (Figure 1A and B, #2) is a residential and industrial area on the flats below Boyle Heights, across from downtown Los Angeles, and just on the other side of the Los Angeles River. I got off the 10 Freeway at 4th Street, went west down the hill, and made the first right. That was Clarence Street. There was a new-looking housing development on one side of the street, and sure enough there was industry on the other side, as promised by the aerials. Parking my car on Clarence, I went around the block counterclockwise, photographing continuously. I went in and out of indented dead-end streets, and eventually I came back to where I had started.

      I discovered through some articles in the LA Weekly that I had been in gang country, that the Pico-Aliso name refers to two housing projects in the area, that Moon’s Market is an important landmark, and that there had been several notable homicides in the last few years. My only protection is that I am often photographing at nine o’clock in the morning on a weekday, when the only people who are out are mothers, schoolchildren, and people who work in the area.

      Further study of aerial photographs revealed the housing projects, nearby single-family homes, and more industrial blocks. I found other industrial areas on the east side of the Los Angeles River and decided to visit them all. Again, characteristic of these neighborhoods are the nearby and intermixed residential areas.

      So my peregrinations became thematic picaresques. What you see and photograph—on the ground, in the built environment, and in its being rebuilt—are signs of the processes of industrial revolution and repurposing.

      The built environment that we now have is an artifact. For Los Angeles, it is an artifact of the Second Industrial Revolution, the successor of the Industrial Revolution of water, mechanical, and steam power. The Second Industrial Revolution was deeply influenced by thermodynamics, and here matters of conservation and flow of materials and energy play a central role. It is a story of processes rather than batches.

      That built environment has by now been multiply repurposed. Whether it be water or power or society, of course we can photograph only the visible built environment and infrastructure of Los Angeles.

       Industrial Revolutions

      The Industrial Revolution—factories, water power, eventually steam engines, textiles, and a bit later railroads—might be said to be less scientifically based than was a subsequent industrial revolution (say 1870–1925): chemical synthesis and continuous processes (versus batch processes) and chemical engineering (circa 1900); electricity and electrochemistry; thermodynamics applied to engines and to chemistry; and the rise of the automobile.²