These 100 Angelenos form a 'human atlas' of LA for major art project

What’s it like to be an Angeleno in the early 21st century?

A sweeping, interactive project takes the pulse of 100 local leaders ranging from teenage environmental activist Genesis Marie Butler to civil rights lawyer Manju Kulkarni and the actor and arts advocate Cheech Marin.

All were nominated by other Angelenos to be spotlighted in Alta: A Human Atlas of a City of Angels, which includes their oral histories, portraits — even their genetic heritage.

Actor and art advocate, Cheech Marin

(

Marcus Lyon

)

Manju Kulkarni, racial justice lawyer and activist.

(

Marcus Lyon

)

“It's a big step, people trusting me — a stranger — with their DNA,” said Marcus Lyon, the London-based artist who received a commission to do the project from the Getty Conservation Institute.

Each subject's genetic ancestry is featured in their profile.

(

Alta-Human Atlas website

)

Lyon said the subjects’ DNA — analyzed by a lab in Houston — creates a fuller picture of these individuals, and in turn, greater Los Angeles. On the project’s website, infographics break down where each person is from.

“You're seeing their long history back to the multiple migrations that we've all gone through to get to where we are today,” Lyon said.

In one exercise, Lyon combined the data for everyone’s DNA and found the most common places of origin were the indigenous Americas.

“Those DNA traces, they're not even traces,” Lyon said. “They're there, and they're big, and that's a wonderful thing to celebrate. These are the people who were always here.”

Many access points

Genesis Marie Butler, animal justice activist and great-niece of Cesar Chavez.

(

Marcus Lyon

)

There are multiple ways to uncover the subjects’ stories. Aside from the website, there’s a downloadable app, a book and the Intersections podcast featuring the stories of the subjects. One of the subjects, the Chicana activist and musician Martha Gonzalez, hosts the podcast which is scored to original music by Brian Eno.

If you’re more of a visual thinker, you can see all 100 portraits on display at the L.A. Public Library downtown until April 27.

On the first floor of the Central Library, the walls are lined with photos of each subject standing against a starkly white backdrop.

Some may be easily recognizable such as labor leader Dolores Huerta and Father Gregory Boyle, gang interventionist and founder of Homeboy Industries.

There's also a younger cohort of advocates, such as Scarlett Paulina De Leon, who works on housing, and Louis Tse, a rocket scientist who also leads a nonprofit helping unhoused college students.

The aggregate of their images capture the city’s multiculturalism.

An exhibit of the 100 portraits taken for the project is running until April 27th.

(

Courtesy Getty Conservation Institute

)

“L.A. is really a city of seekers,” Lyon said. “That's what's most fascinating about the city is this sense of new beginnings, huge immigrant communities, this extraordinary, beautiful diversity, even within those groupings.”

From Detroit to L.A.

L.A. is the latest city examined by Lyon, who over the last decade has completed similar projects about Detroit, Brazil, Germany and Silicon Valley.

The L.A. endeavor came about after Tom Learner, head of science at the Getty Conservation Institute, learned about Lyon’s work and contacted him in 2020. For Learner, a “human atlas” of L.A. fit perfectly with the theme of Getty’s PST major arts initiative for 2024-25 titled “Art and Science Collide.”

Labor organizer Dolores Huerta.

(

Marcus Lyon

)

Scarlett De Leon oversees housing and transit justice campaigns for ACT-LA.

(

Marcus Lyon

)

Also, Learner said, the project meshed with the conservation institute’s goal of moving beyond preserving material objects and sites to “this idea that we're preserving stories.”

“We're preserving memories,” Learner said. “We're preserving a legacy of L.A., essentially.”

A slice in time

The project took about four years for Lyon to complete, with the help of hundreds of people.

His work with the subjects took place mostly in 2023. In the time since, much has changed with some of their lives. A few have moved out of the region. Others have retired.

The civil rights leader and pastor James Lawson died in June 2024. His words live on through the app, where you can hear him talk about working in the non-violent movement with Martin Luther King Jr.

“We disarm our hatred, disarm ourselves and become a community,” Lawson is recorded saying.

There’s also Kristin Crowley, who became L.A.’s first woman fire chief in 2022.

Kristin Crowley, assistant chief of LAFD’s Operations Valley Bureau.

(

Marcus Lyon

)

In her oral history, Crowley said: “We put ourselves at risk to help the community so that in their time of need, no matter what, they can always count on us.”

After the Palisades Fire, a political maelstrom ensued, and Crowley was removed by Mayor Karen Bass.

Since she lost the top post, Crowley has switched to working as an assistant chief at the fire department’s bureau in the Valley.

“We shed a few tears over that one,” said Lyon, who calls Crowley a good friend. “I think she was given an impossible job.”

Lyon said after a professional break, he would like to revisit L.A. in the future and check in with the subjects whom he calls change agents on fronts like housing and environment — just some of the areas experiencing tumult under the Trump administration.

“You know, 2023 is recorded in all its glory in that group of people,” Lyon said. “There's a little bit of an innocence in the work from 2023. I don't think we realized the multiple storms that were coming our way in so many ways."