David Lynch found whole worlds in Los Angeles. This new photography show brings them into focus
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Set us as preferred On any given day, David Lynch would set out from his Hollywood Hills home with his camera and a number in mind: 10 photos in five hours, say.His son, the film director Riley Sweeney Lynch, recalls him turning these excursions into a game.
“For him, taking photos was like going on a treasure hunt,” he said.The camera became “a way into the world,” another instrument for finding ideas.
He’d return with images of abandoned stairwells, dilapidated neon signage, Art Deco theater facades, boiler room control valves.The only guide you need for fall entertainment.Evidence of these wanderings arrives in L.A.this fall.
Opening Sept.19 at Pace, “David Lynch: L.A.” will bring together 35 black-and-white and color photo-based works from five series made between 1979 and 2008.
The presentation is both the first devoted solely to 30 years of the filmmaker’s photography practice in L.A.and the first exhibition in his adopted city since his death in 2025.
“I think a lot of people are going to be surprised at the intensity of the work,” Pace founder Arne Glimcher said.Photography remains a lesser-known dimension of Lynch’s practice, he added, though his prints possess the same “irresistible strangeness” found across his oeuvre.While only one series in the exhibition features the city itself, the remaining four capture its atmosphere.
In the 2016 documentary “David Lynch: The Art Life,” Lynch described the geography of his childhood in Boise, Idaho, as both tiny and inexhaustible.“Huge worlds are in, you know, those two blocks.
Huge,” he said while thumbing through sepia-toned family photos.“Everything’s there.
Everything.” The scene kept returning to Bill Griffin, the managing partner of Pace’s L.A.gallery, as he and senior director Genevieve Day organized the exhibition.
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