Los Angeles is a gritty city with flecks of beauty if you can find them. Last summer, beneath its unbearably hot sun, photographer Phoenix Johnson captured his friend, the model Oleksandra, her movements and body in dialogue with the stunning and palatial Californian environment. A world comprised of sandstone tiles, lagoon pools and cacti, the resulting photographs, shot on film in both colour and black-and-white, feel like both a reminder of LA’s bygone days and the slick beauty that defines it today.
It’s instinctual, consisting of just five hours of shooting over two days. “I had booked a place to stay in LA and was thinking we would shoot all day, leisurely, like people do there,” Phoenix says. “Oleksandra showed up and had agreed to cook a Ukrainian home cooked meal for eight of her friends in six hours time, so we got to work.”
In these images, lifted from wider body of work titled Super Sounds FM, we are transported to that world in which they are taken. It’s one Phoenix — who has also shot for Apple and Marc Jacobs — often turns his lens to: last summer, he launched Baja C.S., a photo book set in the sunny Todos Santos, a historical Mexican village. In it, he highlighted the opportunity of being freed of the confines of a brand’s brief, calling the process “beautiful” and “mundane” at the same time; capturing his subject with a rare sense of uninhibited freedom.
“Sometimes in art you to look to create something you don’t expect, or something out of the obvious. Something about hardship. Something gritty,” Phoenix says. “It’s always different for me.” But with Super Sounds FM, Phoenix endeavoured to capture beauty in its clearest form. “I think that’s important to do too,” he says.
Super Sounds FM is published by Friend Editions. It’s available to buy here.
Credits
All photography Phoenix Johnson
Courtesy of Friend Editions