Anthony Hernandez

Anthony Hernandez (born 1947) is an American photographer who divides his time between Los Angeles, his birthplace, and Idaho. His photography has ranged from street photography to images of the built environment and other remains of civilization, particularly those discarded or abandoned elements that serve as evidence of human presence. He has spent most of his career photographing in Los Angeles and environs. a survey of new photography from the state. is regarded as being seminal in launching the photographer's career. One critic remarked that these compositions show a "peculiar state of stasis." Writing about his 1976 pictures of Washington, D.C., a critic observed that the photographs present an "original photographic approach" that captures an unusual state of animation—even "disequilibrium"—with his subjects simultaneously "energized and abstracted." His early work shows the influence of Garry Winogrand.

In the late 1970s Hernandez began to use a Deardorff 5x7 view camera, which changed the character of his work. Between 1978 and 1983 he continued to make images of prosaic elements of Los Angeles street life and public spaces, but the wider orientation of the view camera resulted in people taking a less prominent place in his pictures while augmenting the presence of the built environment. He used the same zone focus technique he had used in his earliest street work whereby the camera is pre-focused for a set distance, allowing for quick capture. The images explore a complex mélange of consumerism, class, self-presentation, fantasy, sexuality, and photographic representation, and the artist regards them as his first successful color photographs. Hernandez stopped photographing people after this project, and it marked the beginning of his exclusive use of color photography. This suite of photographs was unique in their focus on the evidence of homelessness, and Hernandez struggled to get them published and exhibited in the United States. This work was the basis of his first solo museum exhibition and his first monograph. thumb Installation View of Discarded: Photographs by Anthony Hernandez exhibition at the Amon Carter Museum of American ArtA body of work associated with the Los Angeles River created from January 2003–May 2004, "Everything," explores the river and environs—areas near Hernandez's boyhood home—in a series of color still lifes of flotsam and jetsam situated in or near the river. A selection of the photos, along with a selection from "Pictures for Rome," can be seen in 2019 in the exhibition May You Live In Interesting Times, which is part of the Venice Art Biennale. He similarly used a custom metal screen on a tripod in a series of photographs taken of Camas Prairie, exploring the screen's capability to render an impressionist-like image of the landscape. Although his recent "Screened Pictures," due to the grid and the abstraction, have a "digital appearance", they have all been photographed on film and not been digitally manipulated. Landscapes for the Homeless. 1995. Pictures for Rome. 2000. East Baltimore. 2010. Rodeo Drive, 1984. 2012. Discarded. 2016. Anthony Hernandez. 2016.

Selected solo exhibitions 1976: The Nation's Capital in Photographs, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 1978: Art in Public Places, Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, California; Federal Building, Los Angeles, California; Max Protetch Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1984: [Exhibition Title Not Known], Susan Spiritus Gallery, Newport Beach, California 2007: Anthony Hernandez, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, California 2016: Discarded: Photographs by Anthony Hernandez, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas 2016-2017: Anthony Hernandez, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California 2017: Anthony Hernandez, Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany 2017: Anthony Hernandez, Yancey Richardson, New York, New York 2019: Anthony Hernandez. A confusing gaze, Fundación MAPFRE Bárbara de Braganza Exhibition Hall, Madrid, Spain 2019: Anthony Hernandez. L.A. Landscapes, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri 2019: Anthony Hernandez, Kayne, Griffin, Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles, California 2019: Venice Biennale

Awards 1972: Ferguson Grant, Friends of Photography, Carmel, California 1985–1986: Artist-in-residence, University of Nevada, Las Vegas 2016: Lucie Award in Achievement in Fine Arts category

Public collections Hernandez's work is held in the following public collections: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas