Land and LAPD Scapes

When it comes to the gritty landscape of Los Angeles, there could be few more intimate portraits than those contained in the photo archives of the L.A. Police Department. A sampling from the 1920s through the 1960s, currently on view in a small but wonderfully composed exhibition at Fototeka in Echo Park, offers a remarkable tour through the shadiest reaches of the city: through police headquarters, forensic labs, morgues, and ordinary places that look like movie sets, twisted by violence and poisoned by the presence of death.

It is not a journey for the faint of heart. Though many of the images are exquisitely beautiful, even poetic, the bodies they depict were real bodies. One of the most unsettling, simply titled ”Mob Hit“ (1933), features two men riddled with bullets and slumped over a half-eaten dinner in a restaurant booth. Strangely, the most disturbing thing about this picture is the presence of the food -- disheveled plates of spaghetti, half-empty water glasses, dinner rolls and a long basket of butter pats, bloodied but untouched.

Not all of the photographs are so graphic. A number are creepy just for the insinuations they make: a hammer that‘s been broken off its handle, a row of bent and twisted bullets, skid marks, a blown-up safe, a note that reads ”stick up don’t move smile.“ Several have particular historical significance: One marks the discovery of the body of Elizabeth Short, a.k.a. the Black Dahlia; another is the first image taken of Charles Manson in custody. There are images of the Black Panther headquarters and the Watts riots. A ledger propped up on a desk at Fototeka marks the discovery of Marilyn Monroe‘s death, listed on an ordinary page alongside half a dozen others.

A number of the photographs relating to more general aspects of police history -- the first African-American officer killed in the line of duty; the first officer’s uniform; ”motorcycle officers lined up for donuts“ -- are clearly intended to remind the viewer that the exhibition is a record not of Hollywood sensationalism but of real men and women engaged in dangerous but important work. Considering the present-day troubles of the LAPD, the reminder is fair without being propagandistic. If the show is a bit nostalgic on the whole -- a selection of present-day images would certainly have a very different effect -- the history it tells is central to the life of the city, and all the more fascinating for it.