Dani Dodge and Diane Cockerill are two very different artists, both working in the photographic medium during Los Angeles’ great exile inward from the onslaught of the COVID-19 virus. Their recording of this time is both surreal and sublime; capturing these frozen moments of stillness and making them sing songs of sadness, resilience and stark beauty.

Dani Dodge photograph, 2020

Shaping color images rife with a loneliness that belies their often-vibrant palette, Cockerill says “These past weeks have gone beyond imagination and have produced opportunities for images both disturbing and fascinating. The abnormally clear skies show off the city’s colors and textures that I have not seen before.” They reveal the city’s strange, still beauty as well as what she terms “the spectrum of obedience,” as people respond to social distancing; her plan in capturing them is to create a book of images to remember this time and place.

 

Diane Cockerill, “101 Freeway,” 2020

Cockerill shoots with a Sony AX7 and Sony RX1, one for distance and one for wide-angle shots in her forays from the DTLA Arts District to her home base south of the 10 freeway. In more ordinary times, her favorite subjects are busier street scenes. “Empty freeways, parking lots and markets are new.”

Dani Dodge photograph, 2020

A former newspaper reporter, what drives Dodge is a desire to document. “No words could really convey the haunting reality I saw on my daily walks with my dog… So, I have tried to capture the reality in images.” Taken within a few miles of her Lincoln Heights home, her images evoke noir cinema, created primarily in black and white with occasional splashes of color.

Diane Cockerill, “Wiltern,” 2020

Poignant, and dark in palette where Cockerill’s are often intensely vivid and bright, Dodge’s work feels both like an elegy and a promise, suffused with an aching loss and a transcendent desire for another chance at tomorrow. She says “I want to show hope. I want to show people who are inside their homes, who are just peeking out at the world through their blinds, that LA still exists, but in a different way. I want to show that our world is altered but still viscerally alive, awake and awaiting our return. That when this is over, we can all emerge from our homes to find the City of Angels still singing.”

Dani Dodge photograph, 2020

While Dodge typically shoots on a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, for these images, she uses her lighter, easier to handle iPhone 11 Pro Max. In some, she documents her own handiwork, including spray-painted messages to “’Rona” on discarded mattresses, an outgrowth of images of 30 such mattresses she marked with quotes about love, sex and relationships in an exhibited 2019 series. They are also an outgrowth “of another series exploring spaces within the urban environment” taken at night; now night photography is irrelevant— “there is nothing but silence day or night.”

Diane Cockerill, “Trader Joes,” 2020

She adds “We don’t know what the world will look like after this. But in the meantime, I will capture what I can.” Future plans for the series can wait. “When you and I come out the other side, perhaps I will think about it then.”

Both artists plan to continue their work for the duration of the city’s ordeal. Cockerill says “I plan to continue, mainly photographing from the car. I wear a mask and gloves so sometimes it can get tricky, but if there is a shot I especially want, I jump out of the car for a better angle.”

Dani Dodge photograph, 2020

 Dodge adds, “I will keep on photographing LA on lockdown until we emerge from our homes, or until ‘Rona’ takes me down.”