Seth Lower: The Sun Shone Glaringly

Seth Lower: The Sun Shone Glaringly

Seth Lowerâ€™s second photo book, The Sun Shone Glaringly, explores an observation he made upon moving to Los Angeles in 2011: "It isnâ€™t always easy to differentiate between what is spontaneous, or real and whatâ€™s mediated. Nothing is ever one or the other." Throughout the book, while repeatedly announcing the thoughts and actions of our generic "hero," Lower combines various elements--photographs of oddly familiar filming locations; portraits of aspiring actors he contacted through Craigslist; dialogue and screenplay notations lifted from Hollywood blockbusters; and his own fabricated narratives--to suggest a story at once sordid and hilarious. Like a neo-noir film script referencing works as diverse as Mulholland Drive and Crocodile Dundee IV, Lowerâ€™s book evokes all the tropes of the Los Angeles myth to address an essential question: how do popular representations of Los Angeles affect the everyday experience of the city, and how do people negotiate the slippage between their real lives and their potential selves?

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