L.A. I love you, but I hate you, but then I love you all over again because you're all lines and palms, lines and palms... And, really, it makes you think about this linear quality that is so uniquely Los Angeles, a religion unto itself that makes its worship predictable and often so monotonous that you wonder if freeways actually lead anywhere or if the phone lines function beyond their aesthetic sensibilities. It's this monotony that blinds its viewers - not the heat of the suppressing sun that makes travelers sluggish and housewives tan. It's this monotony that crystallizes the silver screen with the same kind of women - you know the kind - skin- and-bone skeletons of human form, blonde hair and glistening tans from the infinity pools which overlook the canyons.
It's precisely this monotony that Mahboubian's lens captures. As a photographer, writer or artist we feel confined in Los Angeles, yet this confinement is voluntary. We are sun seekers, worshippers of the line, addicted to the beauty that linear perspectives afford us. The city that rose from dust and sets in the light. A city where taking home a nude doesn't mean a painting or a prostitute... Angelenos. Angels. Angles. Assholes. If you capture this feeling, you capture Los Angeles.
