Venice
© Joel RedmanVenice is a series of images shot around Venice in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California.
It’s a place of hopes and dreams occasionally fulfilled and sometimes never quite or perhaps impossible to meet. People have headed out West from the times of the Gold Rush to those seeking adventure or new beginnings. Constantly portrayed in Hollywood movies as a mystical magical place of opportunity.
Venice in particular epitomises this, as it’s a melting pot of ethnicities and differing types of people, be they actors, creatives, wannabes, opportuntists or folks chasing a dream.
Shot in September 2016 at a particularly divisive time in the US, prior to the 2016 presidential elections, perhaps this point will be a moment to reflect on “The American Dream” and all that it stands for and conveys.
As with most cities there are numerous contradictions, the hopes and dreams that people came here with and what they aspired towards, then the often reality of where they find themselves. Venice visually contrasts this at times, with those that perhaps are realising these dreams and those that still yearn too, and at the same time it feels seemingly at ease with these inconsistencies.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
