This is Venice
This Is Venice (Beach) Jacob Sigala, 2024 Photo and video series, 4 parts
Venice, California has long existed in contradiction — a haven for artists, immigrants, and working-class communities that became, over decades, one of the most commodified stretches of coastline in Los Angeles. This series documents what Venice is to me.
Shot across the streets, walls, and gathering places of the neighborhood where I was raised, This Is Venice moves between personal memory and collective history, tracing the tension between a place's soul and the forces that seek to own it. From the Great Western Steak & Hoagie, feeding the community since 1973, to the graffiti walls that rose from the ruins of the Venice Pavilion's Pit, the work asks what it means to belong to a place that no longer belongs to you.
Graffiti, here, is not vandalism. It is documentation. Artists risking arrest to be seen, to mark a moment before it disappears.
This Is Venice is both a love letter and a reckoning. The city still has its soul. I'm still looking for my place in it.