JTF (just the facts): Published in 2025 by GOST Books (here). Hardcover (19.5 x 25 cm), 104 pages, with 52 black-and-white photographs. Includes texts by Peter Lunenfeld. Design and production by GOST. (Cover and spread shots below.)
Comments/Context: Ayda Gragossian’s first monograph North North South is a quietly resonant meditation on Los Angeles, a city often mythologized but rarely seen with such introspective clarity. Gragossian, an Iranian American visual artist based in LA, explores the emotional and political dimensions of urban space. Her work is shaped by themes of displacement, impermanence, and longing – concepts that permeate this photobook with subtle insistence. While her aesthetic is rooted in documentary photography, her approach is lyrical and intuitive, often aligning with traditions of quiet observation and conceptual minimalism.
Gragossian’s photographic practice is a sustained engagement with the politics of place and perception. Her work frequently explores the tension between visibility and erasure, particularly in urban and suburban contexts shaped by class, migration, and memory. Her photographic approach challenges mainstream narratives by drawing attention to the often-overlooked details of urban life. Her images are marked by a sensitivity to texture, light, and spatial rhythm, revealing the poetic potential of the everyday.
The book’s title, North North South, is drawn from a broken freeway sign, a poetic gesture that encapsulates the fractured geography and identity of the city. The freeway, a symbol of movement and division, becomes a metaphor for the American condition: always in transit, yet often disconnected. Two brown arrows pointing up and one in off-white pointing down are embossed on the cloth cover, visualizing the title. Design-wise, the book is simple yet elegant, putting the photographs at the center of its experience. There are no captions or page numbers; the photographs are left to speak for themselves. An essay by Peter Lunenfeld closes the book, offering a poetic framing without over-explaining.
Over four years, between 2019 and 2023, Gragossian wandered on foot through LA’s overlooked neighborhoods, photographing parking lots, store windows, suburban homes, bus stops etc. Her approach, “walking rather aimlessly”, is deceptively casual. The resulting images, all in black-and-white and notably devoid of people, evoke a cityscape shaped by absence and contradiction, hinting at what kind of people inhabit the city. These are not the sun-drenched boulevards of Hollywood, but the liminal spaces where socioeconomic disparity quietly asserts itself. The absence of human figures is a strategy, allowing the viewer to engage more fully with the architecture of everyday life.
The opening image shows a white wall with two windows that look charred suggesting fire damage or some form of deterioration. A couple of pages in, there is a photo of a “FOR SALE” sign leaning against a house on its side framed by the American flag. In yet another shot, a broken old gate hangs off its hinges bordering a beautiful mansion.
There are curious details in Gragossian’s photographs: stacks of jeans seen through the window glass, a Batman figure hanging on a pole, a small hut housing an old school lock and key, staircases overgrown by weeds, etc. Gragossian avoids overt narrative arcs, instead favoring a visual rhythm that echoes the repetitive structures of the urban landscape. There are photographs of chain-link fences, signage, facades – formal motifs that recur, creating a sense of visual continuity and thematic cohesion.
Los Angeles is often described as being the most photographed city in the United States, and has been documented by many artists; similarly, many photobooks explore it from various perspectives, each offering a unique lens on the city’s culture, architecture, and social dynamics. Anthony Hernandez’ photographs offer a sober look at the gritty streets of LA, especially inhabited by the working class, the poor, and the homeless. Over the decades, Catherine Opie has documented many of the city’s layers: from portraits depicting her friends in the lesbian and gay community in Los Angeles to highways, its most characteristic urban feature. And in her photobook Imperial Courts, 1993-2015, Dana Lixenberg’s powerfully understated portraits from an LA housing project trace overlooked community and family connections back more than two decades.
Ultimately, North North South is an exercise in attentiveness, an intentional pause in a city consumed by productivity, offering a refreshing shift in perspective. This work encourages us to pause, observe closely, and discover the visual poetry hidden in the everyday. Gragossian’s photographs transform the banal into the poetic, revealing a city shaped as much by its absences as its presences. The book’s design amplifies this vision, offering a tactile, immersive experience that rewards close looking.
Collector’s POV: Ayda Gragossian does not appear to have gallery representation at this time. Interested collectors should likely follow up directly with the artist via her website (linked in the sidebar).
