In the winter of 2021, the lease on Jake Inez’s place in Oceanside, California came to an end. He put his stuff in storage and travelled to Europe, driving around Italy, Portugal and Spain. In Greece, he visited a little island called Antimilos, where he scared the local population. “I don’t think they had ever seen someone with tattoos there,” says Jake, who’s covered from his neck down. “I was walking around with my camera, and it was like they’d seen an alien or a ghost.” For two years, he lived a nomadic lifestyle, sleeping in his car and in hotels, pushing himself out of his comfort zone and chronicling the small moments born from his spontaneity.
Along for the Ride is Jake’s rose-tinted eulogy to vagabonding and a celebration of his favourite roadside diners, sunset spots and market stalls he visited along the way. It is the practice of studying strangers, watching their movements, postures and gazes — guessing their stories but enjoying the fact he’ll never really know them. Much like the first generation of colour photographers he’s inspired by: Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz and Harry Gruyaert, Jake finds comfort in the mundane and beauty in the overlooked.
“I take photos because it makes me feel something and it’s never a conceptual thing or thought through thing. It’s a natural process for me,” Jake says. “Whenever I’m on the streets it’s instant, gravitating towards something that’s making me question.” Jake taught himself how to take photographs four years ago, when his flatmate brought some point and shoot cameras back from Japan. He instantly fell in love with film photography, the process of which he found “so romantic and unknown.” The idea that he could make a living from travelling and taking photographs appealed to his adventurous teenage self, who would take the 25-cent-metro bus from San Pedro to skate spots in West Hollywood with his friends.
At its core, Jake’s work is nostalgic, warm in palette and governed by the light and lines. Like William Eggleston’s iconic image of ketchup on a table flooded in light, he also turns his camera to inanimate objects — a coke bottle in a diner that reminds him of breakfasts with his father. The photographer, who grew up in San Pedro — “a little rough and tough town that’s the harbour of Los Angeles; they call it the ‘ghetto by the sea’” — is often drawn towards things that make him think of home.
At a rundown laundromat in Orange County, he captures a woman bathed in shadowy light reading a sign that says ‘no $20 bills’. She reminded Jake of his mum, who used to take him with her when she was doing her loads. “I would always be fascinated with her washing clothes and I think there’s something special there, seeing the soap dispenser with all the colours. I loved it,” he says.
He also turns to the places that make people pause. Bus stops and airports are his stages, their practicality and order offering space for quiet moments of reflection. With an eye for composition, shadows and angles, Jake is drawn to empty terminals, traffic lights and motorways. “These are places where people are going somewhere to see their friends or family or loved ones and I think it’s always a vulnerable space. You can see their emotions and body language and I think it’s really fascinating.” He adds, “experiencing the energy in the air, that’s what I feed off.”
Jake has an instinctive knowledge of colour that allows him to capture the drama in the everyday. A green house in the suburbs of Los Feliz, the hillside neighbourhood in LA where he used to live, caught his attention. Beautiful pink roses climb a facade pinned with a McDonald’s sign that serves as a backdrop to three barbecues — a surreal setting that reminded him of The Truman Show. “I would walk past to grab coffee in the morning and every time it would stop me in my tracks,” he says. Meanwhile olive green booths are taken from above to celebrate their curves, and strobe-lit drop ceilings contrast the natural light flooding in from the windows.
On the front of the book is an image of a man and a girl with a skateboard, resting on the concrete coastline of Venice Beach. It’s hard to tell what era it’s from — people always ask Jake if the image is from the 70s, but he’s a 90s baby. It captures the grittiness inherent along many of SoCal’s beaches: the burnt terracotta softening an otherwise stark image with its clean lines and sharp edges. It’s a quiet image that’s hot but still.
Other photographs are more impulsive, taken in the spur of the moment with no real knowledge of how they will turn out. In Along For The Ride, there’s a peaceful strip of a San Diego beach, where people go to watch the sunset, that’s interrupted by these huge freight trains flying beside them. In another image, Jake captures a couple playing around beside the powerful locomotive – their figures blurred against the warmth of a purple sky.
This combination of calm and chaos, he says, reflects the life he lives. “I find so much inspiration just by living or being somewhere I’ve never been.”
Credits
Photography Jake Inez