Bryony Shearmur Art

Volume Two in the series of HOLLYWOODLAND diptychs.  
This is Los Angeles through my eyes.  
A visual diary.  

I have been living in Los Angeles for two decades.

Transplanted from London, I have watched my adopted city ebb and flow, and all the while I have discreetly pointed a camera at my surroundings.

This collection was not started with any intention. It was a way for me to shoot without an agenda  Without rules, but within parameters.

Those parameters were simple. 
Shoot only with my phone. 
Shoot anything I was moved to shoot.  
Place no judgment on the result, at all. 
It was stream-of-consciousness shooting 
My antidote to social media.

I have been a documentarian and street photographer for as long as I can remember, but this work existed outside of my usual practice.

At the beginning of this year when I entered the nft space, I began the process of looking through and editing the multitude of files I had been carefully storing on an ever-growing stack of hard drives. There are thousands of them. 

The idea for diptychs was simple enough, some of the images just cried out for a partner, so I started to let them pair themselves up into short stories.

They tell the story of a city. They are a portrait of LA.

Over the twenty years that I have been living in LA, I have been witness to huge change. These days the city I live in is not the city I arrived in.

I am one of those outliers who doesnt drive in Los Angeles, I find being on foot gives me a different perspective of the city and its people. Sometimes it is jarring, other times spellbinding, but, always, it is interesting.

I see the underbelly, the everyday, the mundane, the dirt, the hopes and dreams both realized and dashed. 
I catalog everything.

None of the images are meant to shock or shame, they are just what I see.  
It takes courage to live in a city where so many people are brushing up against one another, where the air is filled to capacity with big ideas.  
 
I find these people bold and brilliant.

The extremes that I witness are as far apart as possible. 
One day I am enjoying the best life has to offer, and the next I am on the metro watching a pretty girl doing whippets.

I dont know how long I will stay in LA. I miss the English weather. But while I am here I will continue to collect images and drink in this place in all its glory.

All images are shot digitally.