Los Angeles Centre of Photography

By Tim Levy | 5 January 2026

For over twenty years, the Los Angeles Center of Photography (LACP) has served as an necessary focus for visible storytellers. As a 501(c)3 non-profit organisation, LACP gives an area for artists in any respect phases of their careers to hone their craft, experiment, and articulate their distinctive voices.

Founded initially beneath the identify Julia Dean Photo Workshops, it first opened in Venice Beach. After about ten years, the organisation moved to a much bigger house in Hollywood. In 2019, LACP moved again West to a big house in Culver City with lecture rooms, a digital lab, a big gallery, a library, and a darkroom. The house was closed in March 2020 as a result of pandemic and has not too long ago reopened within the Downtown Area, which, for lack of a greater phrase, is… a bit sketchy. Doors must be saved closed always, and entry is accessed by visible cues that recommend you seem like you might be into images.

Not solely do they placed on month-to-month and travelling exhibitions, additionally they host an exhaustive checklist of greater than 140 totally different applications, workshops, and lessons. These vary from printing and designing photobooks to location shoots, portrait lighting periods, artwork images writing, and post-production methods. And all are taught by greater than 150 instructors!

Funding for the Centre comes from artwork print gross sales, college charges, yearly memberships, mentorships, webinars, and donations (Government Arts funding help was not too long ago withdrawn).

The Team and the Space

Upon arrival, I used to be surprisingly greeted by an Australian voice – that of Janis McGavin (Director of Marketing & Social Media), who was initially from New Zealand and raised in Australia. She was a member and volunteer for a number of years earlier than becoming a member of the LACP crew in 2019. At the time of writing, she was, to make use of her phrases, ‘totally up the duff’ (8 months pregnant) – an outline which appeared to confuse her American cohorts Brandon Gannon (Director of Operations and Education) and Dr. Rotem Rozental (Executive Director & Chief Curator).

The three-story constructing (they at present occupy two tales, with perhaps the third on the playing cards) is a substantial house. Downstairs holds a big gallery house, print room, places of work, and a library. Upstairs, there’s one other giant gallery house which doubles as a classroom, storage for digital camera tools and framed photographs, in addition to a photograph studio.

Current Exhibition: Lost and Found by Matthew Finley

Matthew Finley is an LA-based photographer whose work has been proven in solo and group exhibits in a number of top-tier galleries throughout the U.S. and internationally. In his present present, aside from an attention-grabbing array of photographs that embody Ambrotypes and Tintypes (moist plate pictures), he additionally hosted a ‘found photograph’ part that was fairly distinctive in its idea and supply.

Over 4 years in the past, Matthew’s mom talked about that he had an uncle who ‘may have been gay’. Matthew began looking out eBay for discovered photographs of what would resemble ‘an average dark-haired guy’ to forged as a fictitious ‘Uncle Ken’. Ken’s life within the Nineteen Sixties and 70s can be revealed in a photobook known as ‘An Impossibly Normal Life’, through which he discovered a brand new life stuffed with acceptance, pals, and love.

This brings up an attention-grabbing level: it’s loopy to suppose that it was ‘illegal’ to be homosexual in lots of elements of the world. This was true even as much as 1997 in Tasmania, whereas within the US, it wasn’t till mid-2003 that legal guidelines had been handed to permit same-sex love. Bizarrely, it’s nonetheless unlawful in 65 international locations to this present day.

What is fascinating concerning the photobook/diary is that being homosexual within the Nineteen Sixties would have needed to be a little bit of an ‘undercover operation’ in public, whereas behind closed doorways, a extra informal method to being who you might be may very well be displayed. It makes you marvel: had been photographed ‘transgressions’ ever reported by One-hour Photo Lab staff like some Big Brother system? The reply is unfortunately sure.

In any case, these discovered, repurposed photographs had been compiled into this photobook titled An Impossibly Normal Life, in addition to offered as exhibition prints. Another novel method to the show was a simulated ‘slide-show’ full with the accompanying ‘chick-chack’ sound of the slides being changed – when, in actuality, it was a digital projector displaying the ‘slides’ on a Nineteen Sixties projector display.

Centres of Photography in Australia

Back dwelling, we have now a number of comparable ‘centres of photography’ such because the Centre of Contemporary Photography (Est. 1996) in Melbourne and Photo Access in Canberra (Est. 1984).

On a extra sombre notice, in different main cities: Sydney’s Australian Centre of Photography (Est. 1973) saved downscaling till it ceased to exist, then was acquired by Powerhouse Museum in 2022, and is at present dormant. The Queensland Centre for Photography (Est. 2004) closed in 2014 after it had its Government Arts funding withdrawn in 2013. Perth Centre of Photography (Est. 1992) can be in a ‘hibernation state’ whereas they seek for a brand new venue.

Photography is experiencing an enormous resurgence as a interest, largely as a result of smartphones have turned everybody into a possible photographer. This standard growth, nonetheless, runs parallel to a major operational problem: escalating actual property costs in main cities are making it financially precarious to function devoted photographic ventures.

While all of us hope for the return of Sydney’s ACP and Perth’s PCP, their state of affairs is a potent warning. It reinforces the essential have to help the establishments we nonetheless have – not simply with a low-effort social media ‘like’ – however by bodily attending exhibitions and occasions as a substitute of residing vicariously via our telephones.