Golden State Freeway/San Fernando Pass; from Los Angeles 02.12.04 by Michael Light

Hello, collectors—it's Sara. I'm picking up where I left off yesterday—departing from the whats and hows for the whys and what fors. All of which is well trod in an interview in the book that today's and yesterday's editions come from—LA DAY/LA NIGHT—between the maker, Michael Light, and the legendary Lawrence Weschler.** It is in the thick of this interview that the two get to talking about airlight—the visible particles of scattered light that flood Golden State Freeway/San Fernando Pass; from Los Angeles 02.12.04.

A product of emissions, airlight is one of those things that shapes the way we see the world as it exists today—as often as it obscures a view straight ahead, it also appears, magically, in our periphery. I knew airlight long before I knew its name. On family trips in Dad's four-seat Cessna—hop-scotching to destinations as far flung as Martha's Vineyard (where we camped in the airfield)—the sun and clouds that filled the plane (airlight) were the only things I could see. I was small, much too small then, to peer up and over the windows and see and know what was below.

In yesterday's photograph Untitled/San Fernando Valley; from Los Angeles 07.27.05, it is that shroud just below the horizon. There, the surrounding lights of the city begin to look, a little, like stars. What distinguishes the world as we humans have created it from the earth as it existed before us (and most likely will continue to persist as when we are gone), is less and less clear. The things that seem most unnatural—namely, neon and incandescent lights—become plasma bound by gravity. (While gravity itself, remains suspended.) Looking at Golden State—with its semis and cars, braille rolling over a faux-river—the air and the light, and our presence in it, are inescapable. As we've built, revolutionized and industrialized, sending fluff up in the air, we have become so much a part of the earth and its atmosphere.

When we were flying way back when, this was much too much to see and know.

* The 24"x30" prints in this edition are signed on verso by the artist.
** Lucky for all of you who haven't bought the book (yet), most of that interview can be found on The Believer, too. Weschler is also the author of Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees—possibly one of the best. books. ever. on art and being an artist—about the life of LA-based artist Robert Irwin. Highly recommended reading.