Notebook On Cities And Culture

Colin Marshall sits down in Koreatown with Noé Montes, photographer and publisher of El Aleph Books. They discuss what MacArthur Park, that place "beyond any laws or organization," means to him; what difference the much-discussed light of Los Angeles makes for a photographer; the city's sunsets, beaches, palm trees, and the ultimate fact of its being "kind of ugly"; the New Yorker who told him he "just doesn't get" Los Angeles; the pleasures of living in a city that doesn't need defending; the impossible task he once considered upon photographing each and every block; the "synoptic vision" he gained upon seeing Los Angeles as a Borges-style "aleph"; when the LAPD took him up in a helicopter, and what understanding of the city he gained thereby; how Los Angeles works best at two levels, the very macro and the very micro; the "layering of information" in the city's built environment; his work with Metro, an organization now in the process of "actually connecting the city"; how he first gained an awareness of Lo