This was first posted in 2009…

I’ve been meaning to write about Los Angeles photographer, Gilda Davidian for sometime. Gilda knows how to take a Portrait (with a capital “P”) and her website and flickr pages are full of wonderful imagery of her friends and Armenian family members, taken with a an artist’s eye. “(I am) interested in using photography to explore ideas involving home, familial relationships, and the process of forming identity through the act of portraiture.”

Gilda graduated from Cal Arts with a BFA in 2006 and soon after helped start the Los Angeles photo collective, From Here to There, which allows fellow Cal Arts graduates to create exhibition possibilites as a group. J. Wesley Brown has an interesting interview about the collective with Gilda on We Can Shoot Too.

Two series are featured below: Portraits and Portrait Studio. In her portrait series, Gilda manages to tell a story within each image, where the setting, the clothing, the color, and the person combine to provide the viewer with significant insights into the sitter.

Images from Portraits

One of my favorite series, Portrait Studio, is a wonderful look at those behind the camera. The fact that these Armenian portrait photographers, mostly from Glendale or Pasadena, spend day after day in small, unassuming studios, working to create memories, has a sad poignancy as they pose next to faded images of by gone days.

Images from Portrait Studio