2. 13Contemporary Photography12 RPS Contemporary Group Journal
Alien Resident: Searching for San Diego
Julia García Hernández and Stephen Clarke
In 2015 the independent photobook publisher The
Velvet Cell released two volumes of Stephen Clarke’s
photographs of Southern California’s marts, drive-ins and
eateries under the title California Shopfronts. Dominated
by signage and the automobile, the sun’s heat is palpable
in this small selection of black and white images where
people-less sidewalks point to a non-pedestrian culture.(1)
When Clarke arrived on the West Coast in the mid-
1980s in the weeks immediately following his degree,
he had expected to feel a familiarity with its landscape.
Like other British children of his generation growing
up in the 1960s and 70s he had absorbed a version of
California by watching popular American detective
shows. The backdrop to the weekly drama on Charlie’s
Angels or Columbo was the bright, blue-skied Sunny
State in close up. Onto his childhood picture of California,
Clarke had mapped the work of the photo-artists who
now informed his practice: Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari
and Lewis Baltz. In Clarke’s portfolio were the markets,
arcades and chip shops of the seaside promenade that
he had been photographing continuously across Britain
in the four years before visiting the USA. The imagery
developing was of small-scale, flat-roofed, flat-fronted
buildings with homemade signage and an appearance
of impermanence: a temporary architecture more akin to
the mobile or shed. This was a place photographed out
of season in inclement weather and changeable light.(2)
From the summer of 1986 Clarke took up residence
for one year in El Cajon, a suburb east of San Diego. This
was alien territory: seasonless and sprawling, it was not
the place of the ‘close up’. Streets were wide; buildings
and landmarks were spread out. Everything that Clarke
had imagined he would photograph seemed beyond
reach, in the distance, across roads, parking lots, and
scrubland. He needed to learn to navigate San Diego
County in order to picture it.
Clarke took casual employment in the photographic
industries and became familiar with San Diego as a
stage set to tourism and cinema. His first job was as
portrait photographer of visitors to the tourist attraction
of San Diego’s Old Town, a site of historic importance
that had gained the character of a theme park. Later as
a photo retoucher he was based in a studio in Miramar,
the location for the film Top Gun (1986). As a minilab
assistant Clarke collected film and delivered prints to the
Naval Base Coronado where the Hotel del Coronado had
been the setting for the film Some Like it Hot (1959).
Clarke’s approach to photographing the city and
its environs was through simple exploration: he drove,
parked up, and walked. On foot he was an oddity, a lone
figure. In El Cajon, La Mesa, La Jolla, and over the border
in Mexico’s Tijuana, he focused initially on features that
were recognisable in their function but extraordinary in
their appearance, such as the American mailbox.
As the year progressed Clarke met with San Diego
based photographers Philipp Scholz Rittermann and
Phel Steinmetz (3)
. Both offered support and guidance
to enable his continued work and practice in the region.
Clarke’s photographic trips became interspersed with
visitstoSteinmetz’sstudio,thenProfessorofPhotography
at University of California, San Diego. Steinmetz,
introduced Clarke to his photographic work and shared
his experience of San Diego, encouraging him to apply
for the MFA under his tutelage.
By the summer of 1987 Clarke had amassed close to
one hundred rolls of film that remained unprocessed until
his return to the UK in the autumn. Revisiting this body
of work thirty years on reveals his search for imagery that
would resonate with his picturing of the British seaside.
Accompanying the motifs that signal the Californian
heat such as the cloth-covered car and the palm tree is
an abundance of signs designed to attract the attention
of drivers-by. Lifelike animals – bears, apes, and cattle –
pulled out of their natural habitat are dropped into an
environment in a manner that in Britain was reserved for
the funfair or the sea facing façades. Titled San Diego
Signs some of these images have been shown as part of
Carlisle Photo Festival’s touring exhibition Visualising the
Animal (2015/16) (4)
. On the pedestrian-only city streets of
Carlisle, in the shopping precinct at Workington, and in
the Glasshouses at Durham’s Botanic Gardens, these are
creatures displaced by time and place.
1. California Shopfronts has been produced as part
of The Velvet Cell’s zine series Chronicles. See: www.
thevelvetcell.com
2. See article From San Diego to St Helens by Cian
Quayle on The Double Negative website:
http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2015/10/from-san-
diego-to-st-helens-stephen-clarkes-end-of-season/
3. Philipp Scholz Rittermann had directed Clarke to
Steinmetz. See www.rittermann.com
Phel Steinmetz was known for his collaborations with
other artists including Eleanor Antin for her project 100
Boots. Steinmetz died in 2013. See
www.phelsteinmetzphoto.com
Steinmetz’s work is represented by the Berlin based
gallery Silberkuppe and has been shown at the 2016 art
fair Independent New York. See: www.silberkuppe.org
4. Visualising the Animal was on show in Washington
Square, Workington until 9 April 2016, see
www.carlislephotofestival.co.uk
From the publication California Shopfronts
From the publication California Shopfronts
3. 15Contemporary Photography14 RPS Contemporary Group Journal
From the publication
California Shopfronts
Unpublished
Unpublished
From the series San Diego Signs
