File:Michael Light LA Day 2004.jpg

Photograph by Michael Light, Highways 5, 10, 60 and 101 Looking West, L. A. River and Downtown Beyond; Los Angeles (2004). The image illustrates a mid-career body of work by Michael Light in the early 2000s, when he produced aerial photographic series focused on urban and ex-urban locales, including areas outside Phoenix and Las Vegas, and in this case, Los Angeles. These photographs examine the human impacts and sprawl from urbanization and development on the American west. They Los Angeles images feature both harsh and analytical, black-and-white daytime cityscapes—often shot directly into the sun with glaring white skies—and soft, improvisatory, largely black and abstract night images. These photographs and books were publicly exhibited in prominent venues, discussed in major art journals and daily press publications, and acquired by museums.

Artist Michael Light. Copyright held by the artist.

Michael Light

Entire artwork

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a mid-career body of work in Michael Light's oeuvre in the early 2000s: his aerial photographic series focused on urban and ex-urban locales, including Los Angeles and areas outside Phoenix and Las Vegas. These photographs examine the human impacts and sprawl from urbanization and development on the American west. They capture imagery ranging from snarling freeways, railways and industrial yards to incongruous color shapes (golf-course greens and swimming-pool blues) and abstract patterns of terraformed into mountains. Because the article is about an artist and his work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's understanding and ability to understand this development and body of work, which brought Light new recognition through exhibitions in major venues and coverage by major critics and publications. Light's work of this type and this series is discussed in the article and by critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Michael Light, so the image cannot be replaced by a free image.

The image will not affect the value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original due to its low resolution and the general workings of the art market, which values the actual work of art. Because of the low resolution, illegal copies could not be made.