New York Photographer Waxes Poetic on the Light and Trees of Los Angeles

Photographer Bruce Davidson made his career taking pictures of New York and documenting the Civil Rights movement, but recently he has turned his lens toward Los Angeles.

"People ask me what I'm doing in L.A. I didn't know what to tell them. I didn't know what i was doing in L.A.," he says in a video from the New Yorker.

He was attracted to some of the iconic aspects of Los Angeles: the sun, the sea and the pollution. But he enjoys capturing these images from a slightly different angle. He likes capturing the desert in the background from behind the Hollywood sign, and the way the ivy grows on the concrete.

He gets all Jurassic Park on us: "Nature clings. Nature will adapt. Nature will find a way to live...even under concrete."

He even learned to love the light despite himself: “I’ve never been a photographer that loves sunshine. I love gloom. But now it’s changing for me. I just want the tree to be there and to be lit beautifully, and the light in L.A. is extraordinary. It’s still L.A. It’s still wonderfully absurd."