Portraits of a Sacred American Suburb
Tom Johnson’s photographs of Lakewood, where I live and work, are as true as they are visually compelling. He’s picturing the place where stories of working-class aspirations were first mass-produced in the 1950’s. Today, the same stories of anxiety and hope are being told, but the speakers are all the colors of our maximally mixed Los Angeles.
You don’t have to like the suburbia that Johnson depicts with his steady, un-ironic gaze. After considering his photographs, though, you should be a better judge of what my neighbors and I have both lost and gained by living here.
D.J. Waldie
Author of “Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir”