Brian O’Neill is a sociologist and photographer based in Illinois, for
the moment. His work explores the relations of society to nature, using a
variety of documentary and analytical techniques. Much of his
photographic and sociological output to date has investigated the
practices and meanings of "industry" to local communities and
environments. Rather than the typical documentary question - what is
going on here? - Brian's work provokes a confrontation with society that
begs the question: how did we get here to begin with? Beach Boulevard (to be published later this year through independent phonebook publisher
@immaterialbooks) is his first photographic publication.
@socioneill
"Pink hues begin to meld with the sea haze along the beach as the sun
sets over the site of the old high school, now replaced by common
establishments. Two young women wait for a young man, circling a street
corner on their bikes as another day begins to pass to night along the
beach. This area was once orange groves and oil fields as far as the eye
could see. What fills the horizon? Further inland now, homes hide
behind ten-foot brick walls, trying to remain in the shade. And, at the
end of a long day of walking the hot pavement and breathing the fumes of
individual liberty, a rare young man tells the tale of his false
imprisonment and asks where the pier is - so that he can retrieve his
backpack and dog. I tell him, follow along Beach Boulevard.
As a sociologist, I am trained to classify and to document the world –
to distinguish between types, and to apprehend the logic of the
inhabitants of a differentiated, unequal world. On the minimal
adventures that constituted the basis for Beach Boulevard though, my aim
was more like discovery. Indeed, Beach Boulevard itself – that 50 mile
stretch of pavement between the Pacific Ocean and the San Gabriel
Mountains was a veritable foreign land to me, having grown up in the
great industrial pasture called “the Midwest.” Hence, beach boulevard
served as my central axis of orientation in this place without a center.
And along the main artery of the great superorganism of Southern
California, I encountered its many capillaries of low-rise apartments,
condos, strip malls, fast food eateries, and highways piling up to the
ocean. As Kem Nunn wrote, one desert confronts another, the “city”
squats “at the edge of the sea…dwarfed by the immense thing that lay
before it.” I was, and remain, completely fascinated by this region, as a
phenomenon and historical condition."