Seth Lower-s second photo book, The Sun Shone Glaringly, explores an observation he made upon moving to Los Angeles in 2011: "It isn-t always easy to differentiate between what is spontaneous, or real and what-s mediated. Nothing is ever one or the other." Throughout the book, while repeatedly announcing the thoughts and actions of our generic "hero," Lower combines various elements--photographs of oddly familiar filming locations; portraits of aspiring actors he contacted through Craigslist; dialogue and screenplay notations lifted from Hollywood blockbusters; and his own fabricated narratives--to suggest a story at once sordid and hilarious. Like a neo-noir film script referencing works as diverse as Mulholland Drive and Crocodile Dundee IV, Lower-s book evokes all the tropes of the Los Angeles myth to address an essential question: how do popular representations of Los Angeles affect the everyday experience of the city, and how do people negotiate the slippage b
