Sereno, 2006

The Sereno series depicts my eastside (Los Angeles) neighborhood and plays on contrasts of “natural“ spaces in urban areas and the title itself, which means serene in Spanish but is also the local gang name. I have practiced a type of landscape photography and self–portraiture in various forms throughout my career. The Sereno series embodies this impulse in my work and realizes the idea of landscape as self-portrait in that it is my vision of an environment I have become intimately acquainted with and in which I live. The image Coldwell Couch created for the How many Billboards: Art In Stead project represents a new direction for the series and puts forward the idea of landscape as real estate, landscape as the receptor of yearning and loathing in the pursuit of home and comfort for my generation. The couch in this image is a monument to consumerism and our throw away society, a kind of tattered body/politic. – Christina Fernandez