Whitewash by Nicholas Alan Cope
Nicholas Alan Cope's photographs evoke a unique vision of Los Angeles and its contrasts as seen exclusively through its everyday architecture.
Searching for the sublime core of the city's true nature, Cope strips away the extraneous, and focuses on the sheer beauty and simplicity of the cityscape. To an outsider, the profound cultural, historical, and architectural imprint of the City of Angels can be lost amongst the unsightly sprawl of stucco, strip malls, and irrelevant adornment.
While the sunlight can be unforgiving and harsh, bleaching the landscape into a pale hue, the allure, for Cope, lies in the consistency and ubiquity of the buildings combined with the severity of the light accentuating the dramatic elegance of the architecture. Whitewash utilizes the whitest whites, the blackest blacks, and the modern and stark architecture of an idealized future that never arrived to tell the visual story of LA's uniquely conflicted soul.
Raised in Maryland, Nicholas moved to Los Angeles in 2004 and attended Art Center College of Design. Since graduating Nicholas has worked for a number of commercial and editorial clients while also working on personal projects. His first book Whitewash was released by powerHouse Books in April of 2013.
Words and images: Courtesy of Nicholas Alan Cope
