Looking for something?

Tap outside or press close

InspirationPhotography

On Hollywood: Documenting women's dreams against the harsh reality of life

For her series On Hollywood, French photographer Lise Sarfati walked the streets of Los Angeles and the Bay Area to research women's identities and the construction of feminine types.

Written By:
Photographs and info courtesy of [Rose Gallery](http://www.rosegallery.net/sarfati/hollywood/exhibition)

Photographs and info courtesy of Rose Gallery

The artist is highly attuned to the ways in which her female subjects are attempting to construct their identities and how they choose to reveal their characters to those around them. The artist is interested in documenting the intersection between the created, fictional caricature of femininity and what is natural and self-evident.

On Hollywood includes photographs shot in and around Hollywood's urban stream over the course of 2009 and 2010. In these images, the sharp focus is on the dimension of the landscape in its most ordinary manifestations; empty sidewalks, cluttered storefronts, parking lots and cars.

Hollywood is at once an iconic American setting populated by women who believe in bygone realities, as well as a zone of the universal and mundane occupied by women living on the margins. Sarfati describes the women she photographs as "toys of strange and terrible fates they are aware of but which they never seem to achieve any control over".

The underlying theme of these pictures is thus, the way these women choose to project themselves and the tension between their illusions and life's actualities in modern-day Los Angeles.

Born in Oran, French Algeria, Sarfati grew up in Nice, France, graduating in Russian from the Sorbonne in 1979 with a thesis on Russian photography. In 1986, she became the official photographer for the Académie des Beaux-Arts. From 1989 to 1998, she lived in Russia, photographing decaying industrial sites and abandoned young people in Moscow, Norilsk and Vorkuta. Her first book, Acta Est, presents 43 of her Russian photographs and explains her imaginative appreciation of deterioration, change and beauty.

A woman stands outside a green-painted storefront with a medical caduceus symbol on its door, in an urban street setting with storefronts and signage visible
Woman with platinum blonde hair and fringe looking upward, standing before a yellow Victorian house and street sign under clear blue sky
A woman with reddish-brown wavy hair and dark clothing stands outside a storefront on a Hollywood street, gazing to the side
Woman in black dress and boots standing in a doorway on a Hollywood street lined with shuttered storefronts and signage
Woman with voluminous textured hair wearing a white strapless top, standing in front of weathered buildings on a Los Angeles street
Woman in purple cardigan and turquoise skirt standing on a Los Angeles street beside an overgrown chain-link fence and palm tree shadow
Woman leaning against a black vintage Ford car parked outside a pink motel building in Los Angeles
Young woman reclining on a bed in a pink-walled bedroom with zebra-print headboard and posters above
Blonde woman with long hair wearing a cream cardigan gazes downward against an urban Los Angeles backdrop of buildings and trees
Woman leaning against an ornate metal security gate on a Hollywood street, with a parked truck visible to the left
Woman with black hair and dark clothing standing on a Hollywood street lined with vintage neon signs and storefronts
Woman with dark hair holding a paintbrush, standing against a metal gate and dark doorway on a Los Angeles street
Woman in heels and dark shorts stands against a red wall next to chain-link fencing in an urban setting
Woman crouching against a burgundy wall beside a shuttered storefront on a Hollywood street
Woman with white-blonde hair in a white dress standing on a Hollywood street lined with tall buildings and storefronts
Young woman with long dark hair gazes upward on a Hollywood street lined with palm trees and a white Art Deco building behind her
Woman with dark hair sitting at a table against a red wall at night, holding a coffee cup on a dimly lit urban street
Share

Further Reading