Tif Sigfrids is thrilled to announce an exhibition by Los Angeles based artist George Porcari entitled LA Pictures 78/79. This is the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery. The show will open in Comer, Georgia on Saturday, June 12th with a reception from 12 to 4.

LA Pictures 78/79 includes a selection of ten photographs taken at the end of the decade in various neighborhoods of Los Angeles that Porcari was familiar with, including Gardena, the neighborhood that George emigrated to from Lima, Peru in 1962 at the age of ten. Other neighborhoods include, Santa Monica, Venice, Hawthorne, El Segundo and Westwood. Many of the pictures depict cars or were taken from a car. A recurring motif in the imagery is the perspective as seen through a windshield, in effect turning the images into a roaming portrait of the city taken by a young man in his twenties.

During the period in which these pictures were taken Porcari had no formal art training and was working as an auto mechanic and unloading trucks at an import/export company. It was during this time that he discovered art house cinema at the New Vagabond Theater in the MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles. A viewer familiar with 70’s films like Wanda, Walkabout, or The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (to name a few) can sense Porcari’s enthusiasm for their raw cinematography by way of his framing choices. I’ve often thought when looking at George’s pictures that it’s as if someone hit pause at a random moment during a movie, a frame of seeming insignificance that doesn’t get used for the poster.

Shortly after taking these photographs were taken, Porcari moved to New York City and enrolled in Pratt Institute to study photography. He later received his MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena where he worked as Acquisitions Librarian for 33 years. His work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Photography in Los Angeles Now at LACMA and Point Blank at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Porcari is the recent recipient of the Tiffany prize. A collection of his essays about Michaelangelo Antonioni, The Antonioni Adventure, was published in 2018 by Delancey Street Press. For more information about the artists photography, films, and writing, visit lightmonkey.net.