NOWHERE: Photographer Tony Kelly’s Fine Art Culture Capture of L.A. In Lockdown
A bird’s eye view of the iconic pool at The Beverly Hills Hotel, a bastion of L.A. luxury living.
By: Janet Mercel
Tony Kelly’s work is like a bright yellow bottle of Veuve Clicquot caught in the act of exploding. His images are juicy, punchy, hyper-color portraits of people who live sparkly lives, or appear to: Theodora Richards tipping into an aquamarine swimming pool, Demi Lovato embracing a pink flamingo floatie, Justin Bieber getting the ever living *#@& kicked out of him in a boxing ring wearing a crisp white dress shirt. Tony likes turning super luxury and status on its head into social commentary, and getting a rise out of people. Or, as he says, “It brings me joy to trash people’s obsession with gratification.”
During last April’s pandemic lockdown, when most quarantiners were still fixated on perfecting their banana bread recipe, the transplanted Angeleno was just as isolated, but a lot less homebound. He’s also been in love with the streets of L.A. since he moved here from Dublin eleven years ago, and was as unsettled by its rapid breakdown as everyone else.
Almost overnight, Kelly’s themes of Hollywood consumerism gone wrong became the real thing. “I’d ride the same route on my cycle every day, down to Rodeo and Wilshire and loop back up,” he described his routine in the early days of shelter in place. “I know every nook and cranny of where I live in West Hollywood. The path was all within my usual, but the landscape had changed so much. Pretty much from the get-go I started shooting.”
The Gucci storefront boarded up and painted to match the same shade of the robin’s egg blue facade.
NOWHERE is the result, Tony’s lush, graphic art book shot from March to June 2020. He made the solitary tour of the shuttered city his daily mission, capturing a different stretch of Melrose or Beverly Boulevard each trip out. “I spoke to nobody, I was totally on my own.” Maybe it was his training in tabloid journalism in the 1990’s, or his deep sense of grief at seeing his adopted hometown in such a lonely state, but over and over he managed to catch the exact moment that extreme affluence meets with abandonment, and makes something beautiful.
A neon tangerine supercar sitting unused under a tree. The zeitgeist moment of Tony’s girlfriend and sole human figure we see, pressing the button at a stoplight with the point of a single, patent leather stiletto, will forever trigger anyone who lived through the months of avoiding contact with any public surface whatsoever. (That shot didn’t make it in the book but it lives on Tony’s color saturated Instagram.) At the Beverly Hills Hotel, he came across the staff outdoors on a side street with tables of trademark millennial pink boxes, quietly distributing their famous McCarthy salads to front line workers. “Say what you will, but they were one of the only ones who kept most all of their staff throughout the closures.”
Precious cargo: the iconic McCarthy Salads issued to front line workers in Beverly Hills.
Seeing Tony’s portrayal of the city amid a pandemic makes it somehow both more and less creepy, like a Ryan Murphy dream sequence where you know something bad is going to happen, but it’s irresistible to wait and see what they see. In mid April, while I was feeling particularly in need of anything to distract me, Tony was making new discoveries at LAX while the airlines were shut down.
“Drive out there in the morning and do the loop in the car,” he instructed. “Into departures and all the way around and back out. It’s once in a lifetime.” Maybe I wouldn’t have listened if I wasn’t already stir crazy and half mad, but I suppose that was the point. “Bizarre,” I messaged, but I drove out alone to the airport early, and will honestly never forget what I saw. Or rather, didn’t see.
Johanna’s legs reading once-in-a-lifetime headlines.
Not one. Single. Car. Not at the approach, not lined up at each gate, and when I rolled up the exit ramp to Sepulveda Boulevard on the only occasion I will ever be the lone car on those normally crushed lanes, and The Bee Gees blared onto the radio, (please do me the service of Googling lyrics to the morbidly apropos “Stayin’ Alive”), I felt IRL what Tony had been conveying with his images from the start. Namely, that wherever you found yourself in that time, it was the End of The World. (Hi, Montauk.)
NOWHERE is a capsule of something we will never see again. Even if the coming months prove to offer their own hardship, it will be altered, redefined, and the first weeks we collectively experienced lockdown will never be replicated. The specific notes will always be there: A manicured hand retrieving an L.A. Times COVID-19 headline from a mailbox. The billboards on an empty Sunset Strip announcing Netflix’ series HOLLYWOOD, (whose premiere season I binged during Work From Home), and for the release of the iPhone 11, and Tiger King. These culture captures are indelible timestamps.
“I wanted something different than what I usually do, not a magazine look. It was a very deep and personal time, and I was really thinking about the people I see daily that disappeared overnight without jobs,” Tony says. “I didn’t want the iconic ‘Jack Nicholson playing golf on a roof, by Annie Leibovitz’ moment. There is no celebrity other than L.A. in this book.”
L.A.’s landmark destinations, hotspots, and regulars mean a lot to Tony Kelly. Here’s what he missed most during lockdown, what saved his sanity, and what he can’t wait to return to.
Mmhmmm (aka Georgio’s disco) at The Standard Hotel. “This is by far the best L.A. night spot.”
Dinner at The Sunset Tower Bar. “Fabulous old Hollywood. Always sit piano-side. The best dinners are with my pals, ranging from creative chat to whatever celebrity was arrested that week. And the ever elegant maître d’ Gabe Doppelt is always a joy to see.”
The Standard Hotel Pool. “Afternoon tanning. I love the easy-going, friendly breeze that flows through that spot, and I hold many a poolside meeting there.”
Beside the grand piano at Chateau Marmont. “Sitting next to my dear friend, Jason Pelsey, the resident maestro, who serenades the regulars of this wonderful establishment. So many wonderful nights I’ve enjoyed there.”
