Los Angeles Without Traffic!
by Moe Beitiks, 11/19/09
It’s a ghost highway in the middle of LA! Not the result of road closures, the apocalypse, a zombie scare, or a massive increase in the price of petroleum, this series of car-less highways are the brainchild of photographer Tom Baker. Curious as to what a traffic-less Los Angeles would look like, Baker went ahead and created this vision through the wonders of photoshop. The result is a series of images that are eerily calming.
A number of realizations pop up when there are no cars on a highway. Concrete stretches out like an American lawn, part of the manufactured landscape. The mental din one usually associates with traffic seems to audibly fade. Somehow, the sight of an empty road causes a Pavlovian deep-breath response, as if the air were suddenly cleaner.
Baker’s other photo essays include National Parks and the LA Guardian Angels. The car-less LA was a school project for his photography studies at Brooks. A great bookend to this piece is Eve Mosher’s Insert __Here, which takes urban spaces and revitalizes them with the magic of photoshop.
Via Space Invading
This student’s work is VERY similar to the work of Matt Logue with his fantastic suite Empty LA http://emptyla.com/
I don’t know which came first, but Logue’s images are definitely more polished.
Regardless of the who is ‘flattering’ whom, it’s a great concept and LA is the perfect location.