Fame, celebrity, photography amid the Rock

If you’re heading over to LACMA to witness “the rock,” why not duck inside the museum for a different sort of levitating mass? The Sun and Other Stars explores the meaning of celebrity, or, as our Hunter Drohojowska-Philp tells us this week on Art Talk, at least of notoriety.

Katy Grannan’s been taking pictures of people on the streets of LA and San Francisco since 2008. By their very looks, they just appear to be craving attention. Hunter says the black and white images she’s gathered are evocative of the “freakish work of Diane Arbus.” Meanwhile, artist Charlie White’s pictures are the result of a casting call he put out for fresh-faced California teenaged girls. Hunter says the vacant similarity of the girls is disturbing.

In an adjacent show, Zoe Crosher chronicles the celebrity obsession of a flight attendant and call girl whose been photographing herself for

years in glamorous poses, evocative of movie stars like Mae West. It’s a pre-Cindy Sherman-esque exploration.

You can read Hunter’s take on these shows here.

And you can see them at LACMA through October.