Off the Boardwalk – ©2015 David Zentz
Creating this collection of portraits featuring people I met on the Venice Boardwalk is a project I’d been wanting to do for some time, and finally had the chance to execute in early February. You can see the BTS time-lapse video a few posts back. While shooting environmental portraits on the boardwalk can result in some great images, it’s something I and others have done many times. I thought it would interesting instead to remove the context of the boardwalk and focus on the people that make it interesting. After all, while the beach, palm trees and graffiti are a draw, what separates Venice from any other beach up and down the coastline is the eclectic group of people that you find there and an anything goes mentality. There are few better places on this planet for people watching. Though it was possible to invite people one at a time to come visit me in the studio, I knew that individually approaching people and asking them to leave the boardwalk to follow me a block-and-a-half inland to shoot in the studio would be a slow and arduous process to say the least. In addition, those that took part would have time to prepare and the portraits would sacrifice a sense of spontaneity and “realness.” So, a couple of months ago I decided to flip that concept and bring the studio to the people. After a few days spent jumping through hoops I obtained the necessary permits and went to work, setting up a white backdrop at the heart of the boardwalk, where Windward Avenue meets the beach. Over the course of two days, and with the help of two great assistants managing recruitment and release-signing, I was able to photograph over 140 people representing many, if not all, walks of west coast life. Our selection process was easy. If you wanted to be photographed, you were in. Some people we stopped as they passed by. Others stopped by themselves, curious as to what we were working on. From there I edited the shoot down to around 75, which I printed and displayed recently during the Venice Art Walk open studio tours benefitting the Venice Family Clinic. Shown here are 40 of my favorites arranged in pairs. While I tried to have fun pairing the images as you see them above, the best way to see them is in a random array as pictured at the studio. Unfortunately that arrangement isn’t very web friendly. From here I intend to print them in a book and continue displaying them as a gallery show. I’m working on finding a new place to display them, but for now future locations are TBD. This was tons of fun to produce and I met a lot of great people in the process. Thanks for looking!