JERRY LANE
It was a glorious fall day, and Pat and a teenage grandson were
headed for Chinatown in Los Angeles when Pat realized they would be
passing a block away from the almost-complete Walt Disney Concert
Hall.
"Wanna see it?" she asked. A happy "Sure!" response, and they
turned off Sunset down Grand. As they came closer to the building,
their mouths dropped open. They were stunned.
Pat chattered on about that building like a cheerleader for days.
When it was suggested that her camera group photograph the Frank
Gehry masterpiece, she was euphoric. The appointed day arrived, and
she was ready to go hours before she had to meet her friends. She
circled the building, climbed the steps, stretched upward, bent
downward, took her pictures and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
She liked her pictures, but now keeps talking about going back to do
it again. She wants to see it in the dark, in the rain, in the
blinding sun, from every angle, flying through the air, hanging from
a tree -- you name it. She can't get enough of that wonderful
structure.
Unless you've been unconscious the past six months, you've
probably seen pictures of this wonderful new concert hall. One critic
described the marvelous steel structure as a dropped hankie -- an
imaginative comparison. Looking at it, you have to wonder what it
took to erect such a grand edifice -- and if you do, you have
something in common with Gil Garcetti, the author of "Iron: Erecting
the Walt Disney Concert Hall."
"Iron ..." is a book of photographs of the framework of the
concert hall and the ironworkers who built it. The pictures were
taken by Garcetti, who is just as excited about the Music Hall today
as he was when he first caught sight of it. He says he was driving
along 1st Street toward Grand (that's the Los Angeles Civic Center,
of course) when he looked up and saw a man crawling on his hands and
knees across a steel beam. All he could think was: "I have to get a
picture of that." And that's how this talented photographer started
his photographic history of the construction of the newest attraction
in the Los Angeles Civic Center.
And to whom was Gil Garcetti telling this story? Why, to Pat's
photography group, of course. It seems that my wife and the former
Los Angeles district attorney had the same photography teacher, the
great H. Warren King. Garcetti and King are justifiably proud of one
another, and they got together to present an exciting show of the
pictures of the ironworkers and the geometry of raw iron (with
