A Changing Town Yields Poignant Portraits by Tom M. Johnson ...

In Southern California, the daylight can be harsh, even when the brilliant sunshine filters through a gauzy layer of smog. But in the fleeting moments of day, as early evening melds into twilight, the light softens.This is when the photographer Tom M. Johnson wanders his neighborhood, camera in hand, in search of serendipity. In Lakewood, 20 miles outside of Los Angeles, Mr. Johnson has spent the past decade documenting a town in transition, capturing the intimate <a href="http://www.salehandbagsbags.com/"><strong>cheap Chanel handbags for sale</strong></a> details of homes and their inhabitants for his project, “Lakewood: Portraits of a Sacred American Suburb.”They'd simply be snapshots if they weren't so carefully composed, with attention to color, light and narrative."I look for something a little haphazard that has a bit of a story, like a lamp left on the front porch," said Mr. Johnson, 55, who grew up in Lakewood and now lives in his childhood home. "A well-coiffed house doesn't make for an interesting photo."After college, Mr. Johnson had a successful modeling career in New York and Europe. "That's how I was introduced to photography," <a href="http://www.salehandbagsbags.com"><strong>cheap gucci handbags for sale</strong></a> he said. "I was around cameras. I was traveling. They kind of make jokes about models either becoming actors or photographers. I chose the latter."In the early 1990s, he returned to Los Angeles and built a second career as a commercial portrait photographer.At a workshop in Santa Fe, N.M., Mr. Johnson learned of three steps for becoming a successful artist, ascribed to Horton Foote: Be competent at your medium, understand the history of your medium and come from a place."I thought about that driving on the way home," he said. "I started thinking about Lakewood. This is sort of a unique suburb. I started to appreciate the qualities."Mr. Johnson's parents moved to Lakewood in the 1950s. It was his mother's dream home. At that time, he said, Lakewood was largely composed of a single middle-class stratum. Now, he said, even as the definition of “middle class” <a href="http://www.htzh.net/view.php?id=7430"><strong>NFL jerseys | Fresh Articles about Anything</strong></a> has broadened, so has the mix in Lakewood, where you can find run-down homes as well as manicured lawns.Mr. Johnson is changing, too. "I see different types of pictures than I did before," he said. "It's probably something I'll continue to work on forever."As a former model, he approaches each subject as a poetic portrait, whether it's a tangled garden hose or a couple's embrace. "What you always hope for is the unexpected gesture," he said. "I ask them not to smile and look at me without expression — and then the expression comes out."