Flowers and Cameras. A block east of Sunset and Vine, Pete’s Flowers Shop and Morgan Camera Shop were holdouts of a Hollywood long gone. This was one of the first locations I photographed for the Los Angeles Series, in 2016. It’s easy to see why. The camera signage was super cool, and the way it seemed like someone just closed it up one day and never came back was very intriguing. You could still see in the windows and it was completely full inside. There were cameras just sitting there, boxes stacked up and glass cases full of stuff. I walked around the building and there was one very secure door in the back, and that’s it. (yes, I wished I could).
Over the years I have watched Hollywood continue to change, but this building is still standing. There is a brand new apartment complex towering to the right of it and the building itself is boarded up now, but it still stands. Both the original backlit sign and hand painted Bauhaus style logo are gone, but the metal and neon sign is still there. A little graffiti, but still there.
Before doing Labeled Los Angeles I had never researched a location. The work that makes up the Los Angeles series is really just whatever I liked to look at, or had a personal connection with. Looking into this location was a first for me, and it did not disappoint. To start, I found very little to nothing on Morgan Camera Shop or the brothers, Willard and Gilbert, who started it, so - mystery. Then I remembered, in 2022, when I did my one and only art show in Beverly Hills, I featured a print of this location and actually met a former employee of Morgan Camera, Sandy Weiner. Mr. Weiner had emailed me a copy of the 1977 Morgan Camera News. After looking everywhere I could think of to find a photo of Gilbert Morgan, or maybe something from the shop directly and having no luck, it was in my own email. That was like Hollywood magic. If you know about my larger experience with photography you will get that. The newsletter is a glimpse into what the shop offered and who was connected with it. Super cool. Mr. Weiner had been a film processor and printer in the basement of Morgan Camera from 1977-1978. At the time, the shop was not what it once was. The fade was slow and the end, unfortunately, went unnoticed.
Willard D. Morgan had a very impressive career that was nicely summarized on a wikipedia page, there are even a few photos. I don’t need to repeat what was written there, but I will celebrate that he was a photographer, he brought Leica to America, discovered great photographers while helping develop LIFE magazine, was the first Director of Photography at MOMA, and published the first books for Ansel Adams. He even published a Neutra/Shulman book in 1951…. and more. Yes, really, more. Nowhere does it mention the shop in Hollywood. Which is a little surprising and curious, to me at least.
The building itself was constructed in the late 1930s as a photographic salon, a term used for what we would now call a gallery, or a studio. Shortly after, in 1938, the Morgan brothers opened Morgan Camera Shop at 6262 Sunset Blvd, and it remained open until the early 2000s. (side note - I specifically keep the palm trees in a lot of my work because they are a good marker for time and air space. Here is a perfect example of why. In the 1938 photograph you can see the baby palm tree, then bigger in the 50s and bigger in the 70s, and it's still there today.)
I found this photo that shows Pete’s flower shop as a small building to the east of its future location next to Morgan Camera Shop. I love this because the flower shop was so small and now, in that same spot, is the corner of a massive building. Things change.
And again, I’m reminded why I started photographing the city of Los Angeles. I’m not against change, but I sure do like seeing where things started. Walking into a building you know special things happened in is unique. Takes time to develop.
Not every location I share through Labeled Los Angeles will have such a layered history, but this one was definitely cool to discover.
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