"The
Tagger" Click image for larger view. |
MEDIUM:
Photograph, C type print ARTIST'S NOTE: "The Tagger" was shot with a Canon EOS3 35mm camera fitted with a 28-135mm ƒ4.5-5.6 lens using Kodakcolor 100 film. The photograph was taken from a crumbling concrete stairway built into the side of a hill in an old neighborhood just west of Downtown Los Angeles. Once one of the most affluent neighborhoods in LA, this particular location has deteriorated to the state seen in the photo. What appears to be some kind of municipal building, perhaps a Water & Power structure from the early part of the 20th century, is a notorious hangout for gang members and a range of characters from the lowly preteen "taggers" to the lately-revered "graffiti artists." On that particular morning there were no fewer than six spraycan-toting youths working simultaneously at different areas of the property. ABOUT THE ARTIST: Kendall Roclord, born in 1958, is a native of Los Angeles. Raised in Beverly Hills, California, he led a relatively sheltered childhood. As a result, he has always been attracted to the more colorful, less affluent parts of the city and world. For the past twenty-one years he has made his living as a musician in the Hollywood film industry and has worked on over 200 feature films in a variety of positions such as music copyist, pianist, composer, and sound designer. Variety has always been his mainstay in life. An example of that diversity is that one week he had composed the music for four of the top 10 videos on the Billboard Magazine charts. Three were Mary-Kate & Ashley videos; the other was Playboy's "The Girls of the Hawaiian Tropics." He just opened Roclord Studio in Pasadena, California, specializing in fine art photographic portraits of children. Several of his photographs can be seen at the 2003 Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona. Another of Kendall's photographs appeared in the July 2002 issue of TheScreamOnline. Contact
Kendall through his website: |
