Guillaume Zuili’s California Dream

This is the first big show I’ve had in Los Angeles,” Guillaume Zuili tells me matterof-factly outside the Palos Verdes Arts Center—a nonprofit community gallery tucked in L.A.’s South Bay known for shedding light on some of the wilder artistic feats that have been quietly happening in this corner of Southern California since the 1930s. After an engrossing phone chat about his work, my first face-toface with the 60-year-old French photographer outside in the gallery parking lot is pretty close to what I would’ve pictured.

A charming, relaxed, silver-haired Parisian donning a youthful smile, brown denim jacket, faded jeans, and New Balance kicks with a smoke in one hand, a pair of reading glasses dangling in the other, and the sunny complexion of someone who has been leading the French expat life out here in SoCal for a decent stretch and doesn’t spend all his time in the darkroom.

As for the 30 black-and-white photographs of all sizes that comprise Zuili’s exhibit entitled The American Years occupying three gallery spaces inside the arts center, those manage to defy all expectations—despite my having earlier scrolled through numerous digital images on the artist’s website. Like hearing a virtuoso musician play live versus a nice recording from a muted distance, it’s apples and oranges. Others at the exhibit seem to agree, judging by several rounds of pleasantly awed responses from Guillaume Zuili fans old and new.

“It looks like a painting—or something,” a woman marvels, staring fixedly at a 35 x 50-inch photograph of a man walking through an empty lot into what can only be described as a shower of light. Gritty to the point of almost approximating pointillism, the image is suffused in impossible tones for a black-and-white shot—featuring bright yellowish hues that evoke staring into the sun. “It doesn’t seem real. None of them do,” adds another attendee. “But they are!” Zuili assures with a deep and delighted guttural laugh that suggests he’s been down this road before with puzzled admirers of his work.

The American Years delves into Los Angeles and the neighboring desert landscapes of Joshua Tree National Park like you’ve never seen—and yet faintly have seen if you’ve spent enough time kicking around the urban colossus that is Greater L.A. For me, this includes dreamy photos of movie theaters I’ve
been inside, gorgeously cinematic prints of roads driven, and a stylized slice of my neighborhood bar that was formerly an auto repair shop where I used to get oil changes. How L.A. is that? I tell Zuili, whose response is ruefully accurate enough. “It’s disappearing fast,” he says. “A lot of that Los Angeles—the L.A. I live to shoot—is vanishing and getting replaced as we speak with ugly five-story condos.”

Chronicling 25 years of black-and-white work, Zuili’s images are selected from various series of photos with playfully stark titles like Smoke & Mirrors, LA Dreams, Scrapmetal, and American Redux. They include years of experimental shooting using a simple pinhole photography method (no lens) and a penchant for cameras from earlier eras—including a Graflex 45 Super D dating back to 1947, an old Nikkormat, and a Pentax 67. The common denominator among all the images is Zuili’s mastery of lith printing, featuring high contrasts, seemingly impossible tones for black-and-white work, and a filmic style correlating to his deep love of classic movies—including several American westerns shot in the California desert that Zuili frequently returns to, including yesterday. “Every time I go back there, I’m discovering new incredible stuff,” he says, standing before a series of Joshua Tree photos at the exhibit. One of them, a striking image of massive-looking boulders, prompts a movie reference. “Does the film Jason and the Argonauts mean anything to you?” he asks, like it’s a rhetorical question. “Those boulders in the photo are actually little rocks—barely up to my knees,” notes the magician.

Later, over fish tacos near his home in neighboring San Pedro, Zuili reveals his favorite adage applying to a photographer’s work and life in general—from pinhole photographs to exhibits to the creative pursuit. “Less is always more. It’s better to be economical and more impactful than to show too much.” That’s especially true in L.A., he adds, “where people can be pretty blasé, and a tough bunch to surprise.”

Bending his own rule over a lengthy afternoon together, Zuili generously shows me quite a lot, including his darkroom and studio—a large brick-walled space overrun with prints, cameras, chemicals, and lith paper—which doubles as his domicile in a quirky Pedro artist’s residence tucked on a street lined with small galleries. Outside, in the back, we skirt past a neighbor drying paintings in the sun next to a row of parked cars in the property’s narrow lot. “This is my refuge when I’m not printing,” Zuili says, ducking us into a small secret garden draped in ferns, hibiscus, bamboo shoots, and a few cushioned seats sprinkled with red bougainvillea blooms. At some point during the remaining conversation, he’ll say it, with half his face gleaming in the sun. “I love L.A."

Cowboys & Indians: Many of your images of Los Angeles will ring dreamily familiar to Angelenos. They may even spark nostalgia about double features at the historic Beverly Cinema, iconic drives along the coasts of Santa Monica or San Pedro, and oil changes at the long-gone La Brea Firestone—now a popular neighborhood bar with preserved auto-repair-shop signage. How do you choose your photographic subjects in the utter vastness yet paradoxical recognizability of L.A.?

Guillaume Zuili: I get lost! In a city that’s so sprawling and diverse that it feels almost impossible to grasp and yet strangely familiar, I think that’s the only way to make real discoveries. I get in the car, cruise around constantly, and just keep looking while getting totally lost. Then, when I see something I like, I go back and go back and go back—until that day when everything is just right. The light is there. The vibe is there. Everything for the composition is perfect. Then I shoot. But I need to go back to places indefinitely until that happens.

C&I: In your 25 years of photographing this town, have you become drawn to any favorite areas or neighborhoods? There are nearly 90 incorporated cities in Los Angeles County. That’s quite an urban landscape to cover with a camera and steering wheel.

Zuili: And the more you explore, the bigger it gets. I used to live in a Westside neighborhood called Beverlywood. From there, if you follow Pico or Wilshire [Boulevards] for miles all the way east into downtown, it’s incredibly eye-opening. There are so many neighborhoods and amazing finds along the way and that’s just a tiny thread. Before I moved to San Pedro [southernmost neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles] 10 years ago, I’d never been south of LAX. I spent 15 years in L.A. and never went below the airport, which is crazy. When I finally did, I was blown away by Pedro, Long Beach, the South Bay. ... It’s endless here. I still have many places to discover.

C&I: How did you discover photography? Was there a formative moment?

Zuili: It came by storm and largely through movies. I’m a film buff and was just eating movies up as a kid growing up in Paris. A formative moment of sorts was seeing Fritz Lang’s The Indian Tomb when I was 16, which is basically about this British adventurer at the turn of the century who goes to India and has all of these wild experiences, including saving a maharani. And so, at 16, I’m looking at this and thinking, Damn, I need to go to India and save an Indian princess. About five years later, I’m a first-year law student in Paris and spent a month in India over the holidays. That’s when photography arrived like thunder. It had to be photography. But it took two years, because it was a big fight to leave law school and focus on my photography.

C&I: Were there lawyers in the family?

Zuili: No, I was supposed to be a doctor like my dad. Already being a lawyer wasn’t that great, so you can imagine when I said I wanted to be a photographer. But the interesting thing is that my dad was a radiologist. He worked with X-rays at the hospital but also developed them in a darkroom at home. Sometimes at night, I’d watch him with his X-rays, and I was completely entranced. It was so beautiful to me. That actually had a real impact on my passion for the darkroom, too.

C&I: What prompted your move from Paris to Los Angeles?

Zuili: I was married to an American woman in Paris who got fed up and wanted to go home, and home was L.A. So, that’s what brought me here.

C&I: Everybody has a first “Hollywood moment” when they arrive in this city. Do you remember yours?

Zuili: We lived in Venice Beach when we first moved here, which felt pretty fantastic at the time. We’d have breakfast every morning at this little place on the boardwalk, with our little chihuahua. As it turned out, Dennis Hopper and his new wife regularly ate breakfast there, too, and they also had a little chihuahua. So that’s how Hollywood first came to me —chatting about chihuahuas over breakfast by the beach with Dennis Hopper and his wife. Living by the sea in L.A., it’s easy to feel for a while like you’re on permanent holiday, until you realize you aren’t. During those first years here, I was working as a photographer for French magazines doing stories and portraits. Soon enough, with the rise of digital, my print jobs started quickly drying up. Then they were dead. It was over, and I had to work for myself.

C&I: Is that what led into a more artistic and experimental photographic phase?

Zuili: Well, I was always like that. Back when I was living in India, I was doing my own stuff in black and white, too. In France, before moving to the U.S., I’d done extensive projects about European cities, which included a series of abstract double exposures as they related to the ghosts from World War II. Long before L.A., I was already leaving reality. [Laughs.] When I came here, I started dreaming again.

C&I: Can you walk us through some of that dream sequence in L.A. —photographically speaking?

Zuili: I didn’t really like what I was photographing when I was first discovering L.A. It felt very déjà vu, and nothing special. I had to find a niche, something that felt pertinent and fresh, and at first that became taking photos with a 35mm camera through a small pinhole cut into a lens cap. No lens, just a pinhole opening for light, and that’s it. The most basic form of photography. Essentially, it was a way to show less —and less is more —like a hint, instead of a regular photo. It was a little crazy. It required very long exposures even with that California sun and really pushing my film, which I processed myself. Eventually, it led to my photographic series LA Smoke & Mirrors, but it took time and effort to get there.

C&I: What was the biggest challenge along the way?

Zuili: The problem with pinhole is that the available light doesn’t provide enough contrast. So your black-and-white print is just gray. I had to fix that problem—and that’s what led me to lith printing, which is incredible. It resolved all my problems and, frankly, blew my mind.

C&I: What is lith printing?

Zuili: It’s a completely unique process of black-and-white photography and printing that uses highly specialized developers and paper to create a specific look—like nothing you could achieve with traditional black-and-white formats. You have these incredibly extreme contrasts and at the same time your highlights are like silk. So you have everything—the blackest of blacks and a wild range of colors.

C&I: Wait, we’re still talking black and white, right?

Zuili: That’s the miracle of lith printing. It’s black and white, but with these extraordinary tones that can be brownish, yellow, and even these gorgeous reds—and that’s just the developer that does that. What’s amazing is that each paper has its own reaction with lith as well, creating its own color, contrast, grain, and so on. It’s still a black-andwhite print, but the beauty is that it goes beyond, to the point where you might think you’re looking at a painting, a sketch, or a lithograph. It’s photography that goes beyond photography.

C&I: Your Smoke & Mirrors series presents a gritty, dreamy, cinematic world of its own —and a departure from normal photographic principles, like focus.

Zuili: Focus isn’t important here. It’s about the feeling you get. And it works because of that punch of contrast and vibe from the lith printing —like you’re in a dream, which is briefly there before it vanishes.

C&I: What’s the world you’d say you’re aiming for with these images?

Zuili: Something out of a movie. Maybe a thriller, the storyboard for a film noir, or a classic western in some cases.

C&I: For a natural born photographer and huge film fan, it’s interesting you landed up in the world’s movie capital —albeit through personal circumstances.

Zuili: As a photographer, moving here was like suddenly finding myself in this giant movie set where all the films I watched as a kid were in front of me. That includes Joshua Tree [National Park] and the California desert, where I also love to shoot.

C&I: So did John Ford, Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, and others. Any westerns on your favorite film charts?

Zuili: True Grit and The Getaway by [director Henry] Hathaway are right up there. The latter is a thriller in West Texas, but it’s a masterpiece and could pass for a western in its own way. Once Upon a Time in the West. The Wild Bunch. All the John Ford movies. I’m also very interested in thrillers and film noir. Asphalt Jungle. Public Enemy with James Cagney from the ’30s. Point Blank with Lee Marvin has that amazing aesthetic of California in the ’60s.

C&I: What draws you to the SoCal desert, and specifically Joshua Tree, where many of the images in this recent exhibit are based?

Zuili: It’s the rocks more than the trees. For me, those incredible rock formations make this place feel like the beginning of the world. I could photograph them forever. I was just shooting there yesterday, and it was incredible.

C&I: Any other favorite Old West escape hideouts outside of town?

Zuili: Monument Valley. It’s unbelievable too—but far.

C&I: Back to L.A., and specifically your current neighborhood—San Pedro. That shot in your latest series, American Redux, with its undulating road and giant cranes of the port in the distance, somehow captures the vividness of a sunset—in a blackand-white photograph.

Zuili: That pink sky is the miracle of lith printing. It’s incredible, right? That’s what it does. When I first saw it, it was an “Oh my God” moment. I’ve had many of those with lith.

C&I: What do you love about black and white that color photography can’t emulate?

Zuili: Photography is a lie, it’s a fiction —so, for me, black and white provides a more direct approach to leaving reality. But it’s more than that. For me, it’s really a deep love for and obsession with the darkroom and the printing process. I mean, I literally live in a darkroom in San Pedro. [Laughs.] Really, I do! And this lith printing —it’s such a long process, such a commitment, that so few people do it. If you were renting a professional darkroom, it would be impossible. It would cost a fortune. But my hands are wet with it. I’m literally in the darkroom all the time at home, unless I’m outside in the garden. So it’s all of that. The pureness of black and white, the feel of it, and the great challenge and surprises of it.

C&I: Paris has been called the world’s most photogenic city. Do you still like to photograph your hometown when you go back to visit?

Zuili: It’s actually very hard for me to shoot in Paris. I grew up there, in the center of it. I mean, the Tuileries Garden was my playground, so I was spoiled. I was playing in the Louvre —and at some point, you just don’t see it anymore. The city has been photographed so many times that I honestly have no interest. I don’t even take a camera when I go to Paris.

C&I: But Paris is still Paris. What do you miss about it when you’re in L.A. —and vice versa?

Zuili: That’s the story of any foreigner living abroad. For a long time I was feeling French here and American over there. I’m happy to visit Paris, but after two weeks I want to run away and come back to Los Angeles. I’m in love with this city and its crazy light. The other thing I appreciate about L.A. is that nobody gives a shit about you here, so you can do whatever you want. [Laughs.] In Paris, it’s the opposite. Everybody wants to know what you’re doing—and they’re watching. Here, nobody is. You’re free. And from a creative standpoint, that’s everything. I once asked a mentor in Paris a long time ago for creative advice. He said, “My best advice is to not follow any advice.” When you do artistic work and don’t have anyone telling you what you should do, it’s easier to just listen to yourself and do your own thing without compromise. In that way, too, L.A. is a great place to discover your own road and see where it goes.

Guillaume Zuili is represented by Clementine de la Féronnière Gallery in Paris and is a member of VU Agency. He is the author of Memory Lane (Maison CF Editor, 2020), Once Upon a Time in the Perche (Filigrane Editor, 2019), and Smoke & Mirrors (Clementine de la Féronnière Gallery editions, 2017). Visit the Zuili online at guillaumezuili.com