Arondi

Photography – Los Angeles

My mom’s purse was always full of coins. I pulled out a dollar fifty and rode my bike to Thrifty’s. When I got out, I had in my hand a single scoop vanilla ice cream and a red 110 film camera that looked more like a toy. I took pictures of ants, my brothers, my dog, my monster truck toys and my friends even in complete darkness. My brother Allen bought me film, but he never did get around to developing them. When he couldn’t afford to buy me film, I kept shooting anyway. The year was 1987 and I was 7 years old. Another 11 years would pass before I take up photography again. I don’t know whose idea it was but in the summer of 1999, four of my friends and I met up at Silmar Beach in Pacific Grove and began riding our bicycles towards the east coast. I bought a point and shoot camera from Wal-Mart in Pittsburg, Ca and documented everything. I took a picture of a one room jailhouse in Haswell, Kansas, giant catfish in Missouri, ghost towns, old men with stories, 17th century churches, mountain people, graveyards and desert roads that disappeared in the horizon. 50 days later we dipped our front tires in the Atlantic Ocean. By August of that same year I moved to Los Angeles. Mark James Powers re- introduced photography in 2003. During the day he used my walk-in closet as his darkroom. He showed me books by Winogrand, Bresson, Arbus, Kertesz, Helen Levitt and Eve Arnold. On the weekends I went to museums and looked at paintings, sculptures and finely made furniture. After all that looking I had the strong urge to take pictures again. So, I took long walks with my camera. It was about the adventure and discovery, the thrill of finding people in their natural state. That’s what I liked most. I never really knew what I would run into and I shouldn’t have been walking alone in some of those places. But here I am today doing the same thing. You can still find me wandering through Broadway and 9th in downtown or somewhere in Hollywood at night, pointing my camera at that lonely woman lighting a cigarette. www.arondi.co