Picture This: 4 – Cheryl Himmelstein

Cheryl Himmelstein studied photography at The Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, graduating with a BFA in 1995. She began her career as a freelance photographer and editorial portrait specialist with a personal photo essay documenting a family’s life in a homeless shelter in Altadena, California. Her clients have included The New York Times Magazine, Time Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Smart Money & Los Angeles Magazine. Most recently, along with the Garment District Project below, Cheryl’s ability to produce powerful and intimate portraits of people and place landed her an assignment for the L.A. Neighborhoods Project. Assigned to her longtime home of Venice, California, she captured its vibrancy and uniqueness both with 4×5 color and black & white film. You can view more of her work at www.cherylhimmelstein.com and www.cherylkaufman.com.

Commissioned last year, this project was to be an exhibit at the Getty Gallery in the Downtown Library, displaying old historic photographs of Industrial LA side by side with contemporary images of Industrial LA made by the six Los Angeles photographers chosen for the project. Sadly, funding for the exhibit was lost. However, the project has been digitized and cataloged, and is available to view on the Los Angeles Public Library website: http://photos.lapl.org/carlweb/jsp/photosearch_pageADV.jsp You can either search Cheryl Himmelstein in the photographer field, or do a keyword search for “Industrial L.A.” and limit the year to 2009 to see the other commissioned Industrial LA photographic projects. In this economy digital galleries are a nice way to get photography out there. The Los Angeles Public Library is tackling the huge job of digitizing their incredible and massive photography collection.

(Cheryl’s project was of particular interest to me because my own father was a furrier in New York City’s garment district, working at sewing machines for forty years. AJA)

Cheryl Himmelstein: Industrial Los Angeles – The Garment District

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“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”