Aaron Maynard
John Divola, "Zuma"
1977
John Divola, born in 1949, is a contemporary photographer who was born, raised, and still resides in Los Angeles. Receiving a Bachelor of Arts at our very own Cal State Northridge in 1971, he advanced to receive a Master of Fine Arts at U.C. Riverside in 1974, where he has been a professor since 1988. His, arguably, most famous work entitled "Zuma" was where he photographed abandoned houses on Zuma beach, and often times tagging the walls himself. For this series he thought about the issues of natural and artificial, and to demonstrate this he used the graffiti to make juxtaposition between the cracked, vandalized, houses and the natural, romantic sunsets. He believes his art, not only this series, was a part of his evolution as a character, rather than separate from it.
