This book has a special place in my heart. Not only because I visited Venice Beach ten years ago, but also because this book was one of the kickstarter projects I funded and actually received. The Last Days of a Bohemian Paradise is an interesting book with an even more interesting story. So, let’s check it out.

Venice Beach: The last Days of a Bohemian Paradise is a photography book created by Dotan Saguy. Saguy is an award-winning Los Angeles based documentary photographer born in Israel who lived in Paris. The first time I noticed him was when I watched his B&H talk about his remarkable photographic journey. In 2015 Saguy decided to become a photographer and basically changed his career, as he was working as a software engineer and started shooting street photography in his free time. After exploring the street photography genre, he decided to get more into documentary photography and photojournalism. He did that by joining workshops and actually attended a class at Santa Monica college for advanced photojournalism.

The Venice beach project was something dear to him. Living only 20 minutes away from Venice, he was able to come there very often and spend a lot of time there. The project actually took him 3 years from start to finish.

In another B&H talk called From Street Photography to a Successfully Published Book, he explains what led him to focus specifically on Venice Beach and his photographing process.  He actually made a shot list for the project and kept coming back to the locations  and events  he wanted to photograp—which is actually very useful because when you keep coming to the same location over and over again you will eventually understand how the light works there and how it can affect your composition. I think it is interesting for any street photographer to get inspired to work on a photo-project. I was actually quite surprised at how long and difficult a process it is to publish a book.

The Venice Beach book was introduced on Kickstarter in October 2017. The project successfully raised over 20,000 USD.

The book was shot only in black and white because Saguy wanted the book to look timeless. He wanted to freeze the Venice beach in his pictures since the culture is slowly disappearing. Also you can better concentrate on the composition and people and their emotions. 

It is a documentation of the culture of Venice beach. For me, this book is probably more documentary photography than street photography. I know there is a thin line between those two. Obviously the street photography should be happening on the street but when you see the pattern among the images and they kind of tell the story and connect with each other then I feel it becomes more documentary photography. Not like it really matters, but let’s just say the book is in the street documentary genre. The differences are also in the way you treat your subjects. Saguy explains in the talk how he had to relearn that from street photography and how the photojournalist workshops helped him with interacting with his subjects. 

Even though Venice Beach is the number one tourist location in LA, there are actually not that many books documenting the place. It is one of the places where you can see a rich mix of cultures, which is slowly disappearing, and that is why I think this book is not only nice but also important.

The size of the book is 30 by 20 cms, which is a nice size and it can actually fit nicely into my Ikea cabinet. I like the two-material cover and overall the nice attention to details, such as the name of the book is in the same font as on actual Venice beach. The book has 120 pages with over 60 pictures. What I like about the layout is that sometimes the picture is stretched over two pages but sometime there are two pictures next to each other that often work together very well. 

What I like about this book is the balance between sharing the stories behind the photograph and letting you enjoy them with its minimal layout, which is not so easy thing to do. You either disturb it with a text next to a photograph or you don’t provide it. What I like a lot in this book is the end section where you can find all photographs and stories behind them.

For example when you look at this photograph, what is interesting about this photograph, other then, you know two snakes just freely sneaking around is that the boy and his mother in the photograph are actually snakesitting those two for a street performer who was just taking a break. Or this photograph, which is one of my favourites, taken in a gym which was once home of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Who is this book for? I would say for someone who is into documentary photography and photojournalism, but don’t get me wrong: a lot of photographs are very nice fine art. If you cannot find the book in your book store you can order it directly from Saguy’s website where you can also pick up a signed copy. Saguy is actually working right now on another book, which I am very much looking forward to. The book is called Nowhere to go but Everywhere, and it is going to be about the Reis family, a family of five who lives in an old converted school bus parked in West Los Angeles. You can see some of those photographs on Saguy’s website and instagram.

So my overall feel about The Venice Beach is that I think this book has a potential to become one of the classics in documentary and street photography genre. Not only because the enviroment is constantly changing and this book might be after some time a unique testimony of that but also because Dotan Saguy is a very good photographer and I think we will hear about him more in the world of photography.

Check out Dotan Saguy:

Website: https://www.dotansaguy.com

Instagram: http://instagram.com/dotansaguy/

Facebook: http://facebook.com/dotan

B&H talks:

The Evolution of a Street Photographer with Dotan Saguy

From Street Photography to a Successfully Published Book