L.A., 1971

L.A., 1971 is a sequence of 12 photographs Anthony Hernandez made in Los Angeles on a single day in 1971, among the earliest black-and-white work he produced.

Silas Finch published the book in 2014 in a limited edition of 1,200 copies. It runs 32 pages, printed in tritone on McCoy Silk coated paper, with cloth end sheets and printed aluminum front and back covers. A Japanese-language note on the Twelvebooks listing says the pictures show people going in and out of a safe-deposit facility in the city, and that Hernandez focused ahead of time and released the shutter as each person entered the frame.

Hernandez was born in Los Angeles in 1947 and is largely self-taught. He began to devote his time to photography in 1970, after serving in the Army from 1967 to 1969. He walked the streets watching people, pre-focused his camera and waited for subjects to come into the zone of focus, and he later repeated the method in London, Madrid, Saigon and Washington, D.C. By the 1980s he was working with large-format cameras. His later projects include Landscapes for the Homeless (1988-91) and Waiting for Los Angeles (1996-98).