July 12: Week in Photography

 Your lens to the internet's most powerful photographs.

📸 MOST POWERFUL PHOTO OF THE WEEK 📸

Saul Loeb / Getty Images

Optics are crucial in politics, especially in the modern age. President Donald Trump, with a background in the entertainment business, has shown a bewildering approach to his presidential comportment, including at his most recent rally in South Dakota. Trump delivered a speech on a stage designed to project power.

In this image by Saul Loeb for Getty Images, the stage is seen in full, set beneath the imposing Mount Rushmore Monument and nestled in the Black Hills that local tribes view as sacred (and stolen), with no elements of humility, empathy, or understanding of ordinary people’s lives that past leaders have tried to convey during a moment of crisis.

📸For Your 👀 Only:

INTO THE WEIRDNESS OF PALM SPRINGS

Since the middle of the 20th century, Palm Springs, California, has been billed a destination for the rich and the famous — a luxurious desert oasis known for its mid-century modernist architecture and its leisurely pace of life. For artist and longtime California resident John Brian King, the city has a more ominous presence. 

His new book, Riviera, borders on the surreal by exploring the city through the lens of disenchantment and apprehension. Each picture of city streets is captured in a dreamlike haze, hinting at the nostalgic past of old Hollywood and the cracking facade of a city desperately trying to keep up with its own reputation.

Here, King shares with BuzzFeed News a selection of pictures from his new book and discusses the ideas behind the images.

John Brian King

FOR THOSE UNFAMILIAR WITH PALM SPRINGS, CAN YOU DESCRIBE A BIT OF ITS HISTORY?

Palm Springs was settled by the Cahuilla Indians in the beginning — Spanish and Mexican explorers came much later, in the 1800s. It became a resort for the Hollywood crowd in the 1930s, and after World War II became the “mid-century modern” city it is known as today. Soon after, Palm Springs gained popularity as a spring break destination: Canadian “snowbirds” moved down every winter, gay men found in the city a place that did not discriminate or judge, and, thanks to celebrities such as Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, the city was, and is, loved for its “swinging” booze vibe. 

Unfortunately, when Palm Springs was at its height of remarkable growth and architecture in 1961, many low-income African Americans that lived on Cahuilla Indian land, a square mile known as Section 14 in downtown Palm Springs were illegally evicted from their homes, and their homes were set on fire. 

HOW DID THIS PROJECT BEGIN FOR YOU AND IN WHAT WAYS DID IT DEVELOP?

I was born in Los Angeles in the early 1960s and went to the California Institute of the Arts in the early 1980s with photography as my major — my teachers were John Divola, Judy Fiskin, and John Baldessari, to name a few. I gave up photography in 1985, and I stayed away from it for 30 years until I moved to Palm Springs. 

John Brian King

Palm Springs, for me, has a dreamlike, but also nightmarish quality that I love. As I settled into the city, I saw an arid beauty to the place that I thought needed to be explored. I did some tests with some large-format film cameras, but I eventually settled on instant film for its soft light quality. 

I wanted to shoot a formal topographical photography series of Palm Springs, but I also wanted to capture the hallucinatory and mesmerizing aspect of the city that entranced me since I was a child. I was influenced by Italian landscape photographers like Guido Guidi and Mattia Sangiorgi, and also by artists that made their mark in the beginning of photography, like John Beasley Greene who photographed Egypt in the mid-1800s before dying at the age of 24 and Paris photographer Eugène Atget. And, like most everything that is related to the history and art of photography, the underlying current to the series is decay, memory, and death. 

It was intentional that I did not portray Palm Springs in a tourist-friendly way, with portraits of beautiful people in swimsuits holding martinis by swimming pools and Shangri-La shots of the city’s modernist architecture — it has been done before, and I found it beyond tired. It is my vision, which can be dark and jaded to be sure, but I was really interested in another side of Palm Springs: abandoned spaces, unworldly landscapes — a city that has been lived in and is mostly worn out.

WHERE DOES THE TITLE RIVIERA COME FROM?

The word “riviera” means “a coastal region frequented as a resort area and usually marked by a mild climate.” I was struck by how Palm Springs has used the word as a brilliant form of wishful thinking since the early 1950s, when the first hotel used the word in its branding (“Desert Riviera”). It always struck me as discordant and strange that an insanely hot landlocked desert area was often paired with the word “riviera” in hotel signage and advertising. 

John Brian King

IS THERE A SPECIFIC IMAGE THAT MEANS A GREAT DEAL TO YOU?

My photo of the old sign that reads “Welcome to Palm Springs” at the north entrance to the city is of special importance to me. The sign is a symbol of Eisenhower-era booster tourism gone to hell — the hot wind from the nearby open desert has beaten up the sign and the surrounding area in unimaginable ways. It is also a place that has been photographed many many times, and shortly after I shot it, the sign disappeared. 

DID THIS CHANGE HOW YOU THINK ABOUT PALM SPRINGS?

I will always love Palm Springs, but it is a city populated with many people who think “creativity” can only be used as a tool to fill hotel rooms and restaurants, which in the end enriches the permanent upper class of the city’s real estate developers and politicians. Now that I live in Central California, I am happy to live in an area that isn’t solely dependent on tourism, but I often miss the San Jacinto mountains and the unreal nature of the desert.

 📸THE WEEK'S PHOTO STORIES FROM BUZZFEED NEWS 📸

One week after 4th of July festivities in the US, the country continues to struggle with rising cases of COVID-19 amid the gradual reopening of its economy despite warnings from top health officials. 

Find more of the week's best photo stories here.

A LOOK INTO FRIDA KAHLO'S LIFE

Getty Images

THIS IS WHAT TRUMPS VISIT TO MT RUSHMORE LOOKED LIKE

Andrew Caballero-reynolds / Getty Images

HERE'S HOW AMERICANS CELEBRATED JULY 4TH

Scott Olson / Getty Images

📸SOME HOPE 📸

Don Arnold / WireImage 

It’s nice to see nature healing after a crisis. This little guy was born after the wildfires in Australia.

"That's it from us this time — see you next week!" —Gabriel and Kate

📝 This letter was edited and brought to you by the News Photo team. Gabriel Sanchez is the photo essay editor based in New York and loves cats. Kate Bubacz is the photo director based in New York and loves dogs.  You can always reach us here.

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