“The self-taught photographer Gusmano Cesaretti grew up in Lucca, Italy– but as a child he fell in love with America through movies, jazz and the work of Beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. He arrived in the United States at age 19 on the day Kennedy was assassinated, and eventually made his way to California, where he found work in the photo department of the Huntington Library in Pasadena. It was during this time, in the early 1970s, that Cesaretti began to explore the Latino neighborhood of East L.A., photographing the people he met, and the graffiti that decorated the buildings. These photographs are ‘not just documentation’ but ‘remarkable works of art’ writes Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in the introduction to his latest book, ‘Fragments of Los Angeles, 1969-1989,’ that surveys two decades of Cesaretti’s images. ‘In addition to their formal strength, they were infused with tremendous human sympathy.'”

Also, without Gusmano Cesaretti’s involvement and vision, the “TAKE NONE, GIVE NONE” film on The Chosen Few MC would not have been made.

INSIDE FOLSOM PRISON | 1978 | PHOTOGRAPHY (c) GUSMANO CESARETTI

BIKERS | 1971 | PASADENA CITY HALL, CA | PHOTOGRAPHY (c) GUSMANO CESARETTI

Continue reading →