I am an avid fan of Southern California history and of film noir motion pictures set in Los Angeles: The Big Sleep, Sunset Boulevard and Chinatown, to name just three. Okay, fine. Let’s add LA Confidential and Mulholland Drive to the list. Those films grew out of the hardboiled detective genre created by novelists like Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler. Their novels were set in Los Angeles, a city whose glamorous reputation became laced with stories of crime, scandal and corruption. 

Late at night, when I’m walking my very old Labrador up one side of the street and down the other, the houses, streetlights and silhouetted palm trees create the impression that it’s Los Angeles in 1947—that I’m wandering through a film noir landscape.

I live in West Los Angeles, on a suburban block bordered by two busy east-west thoroughfares. The houses in my neighborhood were built in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, and many of them have retained their original facades: the Spanish bungalow with a red tile roof, the stucco box with aluminum awnings and the traditional California cottage with oversized plantation shutters. The streetlights are from the 1920s: single-upright electroliers with fluted shafts and acorn-shaped globes.*

As Jones (the Labrador) has gotten slower, I’ve had more time to observe, marvel at and photograph the traces of noir on my block. I started shooting this series last summer when the “June gloom” set in and the ground fog magnified the noir eeriness. Now, with everyone quarantined at home, the silence and solitude in the streets have heightened the mood; the shadows are deeper, the moon is brighter and the palm trees are more ominous.

Photographing the same subject night after night and finding new points of view and new subject matter, or reframing what I’ve observed on previous walks, has become the challenge. I have charged myself with finding wide shots, medium shots and details while avoiding modern architectural touches AND the now-ubiquitous Ring cameras that straddle most of the 24 front doors on my block.

The recent rain has added a marvelous reflectivity to the streets. Switching paths, walking up the opposite side of the street and back down “my” side of the street, has given me a fresh perspective as well. I’ve even tried walking backward, but Jones lags behind me and ends up in most of those shots.

All of these images were shot on my iPhone X. Some were “edited” on the phone; others were left as is. I’ve found it interesting to see which photographs are improved by post-production and which are better “unenhanced.” 

I’m not sure how many more late-night walks Jones has in him (he just turned 15), but as long as he’s game, I’m up for finding the noir in my neighborhood. —Art Streiber

* See page 20.