360 Vision, the Leimert Park Vision Theater

On a cold foggy night I went out to photograph the Vision Theater in Leimert Park. While this is a mini project onto itself, it also happens to be an extension of my project "South LA Bantustan" an effort at documenting the fossils of neglect, abandonment and urban genocide in South LA.

Many of us, when we think of South LA, a monument is likely not the first thing that comes to mind. And if it does, you may think of the Watts Towers as the South LA monument that takes the credit for all. But one in a while the Vision Theater, after a few renovations of it's outdoor tower, is turned on. And when you live in the area, as I do, we remember that it too, is a monument onto itself.

But what once symbolized the upward mobility of a thriving Black community who had been urged to seek entrepreneurship.. sometimes in opposition to the fight for Black Power and Black Civil Rights, now stands as the monument to this South LA Bantustan project. Imagine that the largest most visualant monument on the Crenshaw strip, the boulevard in which the South LA Bantustan project is based, is actually a building that has sat empty and unused for 20 years with promises from each Black elected official over and over again.

In the last 5 years some of those promises have began to come to fruition. As you'll see in the photos a new large, purple at night, stainless steel by day extension has been built, and the large monumental light front and tower restored. Hope, as one of the other photos in the project urges us to believe in, is on the horizon, at least we hope it is.

I photographed the tower in my effort to experience what others in my community may or may not see from their vantage point when the sign is turned on.