Photo Credit: Larry Lytle. Self-Portrait
WHO: Larry Lytle
WHAT: Art 1A Artist Talk
WHEN: Tuesday, November 15 from 12:30-1:45
HOW: Via Zoom https://ucsb.zoom.us/s/
Photo Credit: Larry Lytle. #0023
Artist Bio:
Larry Lytle is a native Angeleno who has traveled widely in Europe and the U.S., but has never lived outside of Los Angeles. The same can be said of his professional life as an artist, which has centered on photography. Within that subject, Lytle has traveled widely making and exhibiting photographs as a fine artist, while working as a commercial photographer; teaching photography; writing about photography; curating photography exhibitions; collecting photography; and studying the life of the American photographer, William Mortensen.
For the past 20 years, Lytle has been using 12” actions figures in scenarios and as individuals to comment on life in America. He has also used the molded plastic bits and pieces sold with the figures for commentary on our consumer society—clothes, cosmetics, computers, guns and the typical accouterments of daily life. He has exhibited in galleries in Southern California, the Mid-West and East Coast.
Lytle graduated from California State University, Northridge with B.A.s in Political Science and Speech Communication and an M.A. in Art. He has been a contributing writer for Black & White magazine for the past 10 years. In that time he has written essays about such notable photographers as: Will Connell, Marcia Resnick, Robbert Flick, Thomas Barrow, Jerry McMillan, Ann Parker and Susan Ressler, to name a few. Most notably, Lytle is recognized for his scholarship and extensive writing on the life and work of American photographer William Mortensen. On that subject Lytle contributed to The Center for Creative Photography’s 1999 seminal book William Mortensen: A Revival. In 2014, he co-edited and wrote biographical essays for the books American Grotesque: The Life and Work of William Mortensen and The Command To Look: A Master Photographer’s Methods For Controlling the Human Gaze, both published by Feral House. He is curating an exhibition of Mortensen’s work at the Laguna Art Museum for the fall of 2022.
For the past 22 years, Lytle has taught photography. First at The Otis Evening College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, California from 2000 – 2005 and then at California State University Channel Islands, Camarillo, California as a lecturer in the Art Department from 2003 to the present. Lytle lives in the San Fernando Valley with his wife Jeanie and dog Bettie.
Photo Credit: Larry Lytle. America- US Census Data Based on Age Gender and Race
Photo Credit: Larry Lytle. Art Imitates Life
