AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Street portraits on Hollywood Boulevard, 1972–1975, and jazz musicians in the 1960s
- Works in
- Black and white for his early street and jazz work; color in Movie Palaces and Africatown
- Camera
- Camera on a tripod with a long cable release on Hollywood Boulevard; today a Canon, a Sony and an iPhone
- Also
- Designer, former art director at Capitol Records, Professor Emeritus at Otis College of Art and Design
- Start with
- Star Struck (Deadbeat Club, 2022)
- Links
Ave Pildas (born 1939) is an American photographer, designer and teacher who lives in Santa Monica, California. He is best known for his street portraits of Hollywood Boulevard from 1972 to 1975, collected in the book Star Struck. He also photographed jazz musicians in the 1960s and taught design for many years at Otis College of Art and Design.
The story
On the 4th of July, Ave Pildas hung an American flag upside down on Skid Row in Los Angeles. An upside-down flag signals distress. For years he had photographed people in front of the flag as a celebration, at parades or at the beach. But homelessness kept growing, and he wanted the picture to say something else.
Two men came over first. One of them was in a wheelchair. They asked him if he knew what the flag meant. Both were former soldiers, and they asked to be the first to pose. Next came a woman who asked for a bottle of water. Pildas gave her the only one he had. She left and came back with a megaphone: “Pose for a photo and get a bottle of water.” Soon there was a line. With no water left, he gave each person a dollar to buy a bottle.
“That was one of the first times that I was politically active,” he said later. Afterwards he photographed military veterans living on the street. He believes that part of the series helped some of them get into Veterans Administration housing.
Photography was not the first plan. Born in Cincinnati in 1939, Pildas wanted to be a sculptor. His parents wanted a doctor, and in the end they agreed on architecture. After a harsh critique at the University of Cincinnati, he switched to design. In the early 1960s he also photographed jazz musicians in small clubs, and Downbeat magazine hired him as a stringer. In 1965 he went to Basel, Switzerland, to study graphic design.
In 1971 he became an art director at Capitol Records in Hollywood. The office was close to Hollywood Boulevard, and he often went there for lunch. He always thought, in his words, “this would be a great place to take pictures.” From 1972 to 1975 he did just that. Most of the pictures were made with the camera on a tripod. Holding a very long cable release, he walked around and talked to people before they reached the frame.
But after a ten-page spread in Zoom magazine in Paris in 1976, the photographs went into envelopes. They stayed there for almost forty years. In 2013 a reporter who had seen them in the 1970s contacted him about posting some online. An exhibition at LACE on Hollywood Boulevard followed in 2015, and then the book Star Struck in 2022. Its publisher, Clint Woodside, picked frames that Pildas had once dismissed.
Today, in his eighties, Pildas photographs at the Sunday market in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. Each week he brings prints back to the people in his pictures, and they call him “Picture Man.” Most of them are now friends. “By the time I’m asking to take their picture, I’m already their friend,” he says.
The work
- 1939Born in Cincinnati, Ohio
- 1965Goes to Basel, Switzerland, to study graphic design
- 1971Becomes an art director at Capitol Records in Hollywood
- 1972Starts photographing on Hollywood Boulevard (until 1975)
- 1977Publishes Art Deco Los Angeles (Harper & Row)
- 1980Publishes Movie Palaces (Clarkson N. Potter)
- 2015Exhibition Hollywood Boulevard The ’70s at LACE, Los Angeles
- 2022Star Struck book and exhibition at Tufenkian Fine Arts
- 2026Publishes Africatown
Lessons
Talk before you shoot. Pildas starts with a hat, a dog or a pair of sneakers. A short conversation builds the trust that makes the picture possible.
Choose the background first. His training in architecture taught him to find a strong setting and decide what stays out of the frame. Then he waits for people to step in.
Look at old work again. His Hollywood negatives waited for forty years. A fresh pair of eyes found good frames he had once dismissed.
Try this: find a wall or shop front with a strong, simple look. Stay there for an hour and wait for people to walk into your frame. Talk to a few of them, and come back the next week with prints.
Gear
Tripod and cable release: on Hollywood Boulevard, about 90 percent of his pictures were made with the camera on a tripod. He used a cable release about three meters long, so he could stand away from the camera and talk to people.
Rolleiflex: in a 2022 interview with All About Photo he named a Rolleiflex, a 2¼-inch medium-format camera.
Kodak Tri-X film: for his jazz pictures in dark clubs, he pushed Tri-X to about 2400 ASA and pre-focused the camera.
At the Leimert Park market today he works with a Canon, a Sony or an iPhone, and shows people their picture on the phone.
Books
Star Struck (Deadbeat Club, 2022). His first monograph in decades. It gathers street photographs made on Hollywood Boulevard from 1972 to 1975: bit actors, hippies, long-time residents and passersby on the Walk of Fame. Pildas edited the book with publisher Clint Woodside, who went through hundreds of contact sheets with him. It is a 104-page hardcover printed in black-and-white duotone, with an essay by David Campany. A good first book for anyone interested in street portraits and in working with people in front of a fixed background.
Movie Palaces: Survivors of an Elegant Era (Clarkson N. Potter, 1980). Photographs by Pildas, text by Lucinda Smith and a foreword by the film director King Vidor. The 128 pages hold 181 color photographs and 15 in black and white of the great old American movie theaters, with notes on each theater and an index. A reissue followed from Hennessey + Ingalls in 2000. For readers who love architecture, cinema history and careful color work.
Africatown: Sunday Market, Leimert Park, Los Angeles (The Pildas / Green Foundation, 2026). The first book from the foundation. It has 97 color portraits on 112 pages, made over more than two years at the Sunday African Marketplace in Leimert Park: vendors, musicians, activists, performers, families and regulars. It includes a poem by Father Amde Hamilton and an essay by Ibarionex Perello. Design is by Pildas and Lauren Mitzelfelt. For photographers who want to see what long, patient work with one community looks like.
Bijou (Nazraeli Press, 2016). A small hardcover of 16 pages with 11 duotone plates of the box offices of Hollywood movie theaters, photographed in the early 1970s. The edition is limited to 500 numbered copies, each with an original signed photograph. A box set of these prints, also called Bijou, first appeared in 1975. A collector’s item for fans of his early work and of small details in architecture.
One Sunday visit became a two-year photographic relationship. Ave Pildas first came to the Sunday African Market in Leimert Park after a jazz concert and decided to return with his camera the following week. Photography Book Spotlight