A Changing Town Yields Poignant Portraits by Tom M. Johnson ...

In Southern California, the daylight can be harsh, even when the brilliant sunshine filters through a gauzy layer of smog. But in the fleeting moments of day, as early evening melds into twilight, the light softens.This is when the photographer <a href="http://www.eabyshop.com/football-shoes/nike-soccer-shoes/nike-total-90.html"><strong>Football Shoes Nike Total 90 </strong></a> Tom M. Johnson wanders his neighborhood, camera in hand, in search of serendipity. In Lakewood, 20 miles outside of Los Angeles, Mr. Johnson has spent the past decade documenting a town in transition, capturing the intimate details of homes and their inhabitants for his project, “Lakewood: Portraits of a Sacred American Suburb.”They'd simply be snapshots if they weren't so carefully composed, with attention to color, light and narrative."I look for something a little haphazard that has a bit of a story, like a lamp left on the front porch," said Mr. Johnson, 55, who grew up in Lakewood and now lives in his childhood home. "A well-coiffed house doesn't make for an interesting photo."After college, Mr. Johnson had a successful modeling career in New York and Europe. "That's how I was introduced to photography," he said. "I was around cameras. I was traveling. They kind of make jokes about models either becoming actors or photographers. I chose the latter."In the early <a href="http://www.eabyshop.com/football-shoes/nike-soccer-shoes.html"><strong>Nike Soccer Shoes</strong></a> 1990s, he returned to Los Angeles and built a second career as a commercial portrait photographer.At a workshop in Santa Fe, N.M., Mr. Johnson learned of three steps for becoming a successful artist, ascribed to Horton Foote: Be competent at your medium, understand the history of your medium and come from a place."I thought about that driving on the way home," he said. "I started thinking about Lakewood. This is sort of a unique suburb. I started to appreciate the qualities."Mr. Johnson's parents moved to Lakewood in the 1950s. It was his mother's dream home. At that <a href="http://041823.com/view.php?id=25923"><strong>Have You Ever Seen The Wonderful Mbt Chapa Shoes in summer</strong></a> time, he said, Lakewood was largely composed of a single middle-class stratum. Now, he said, even as the definition of “middle class” has broadened, so has the mix in Lakewood, where you can find run-down homes as well as manicured lawns.Mr. Johnson is changing, too. "I see different types of pictures than I did before," he said. "It's probably something I'll continue to work on forever."As a former model, he approaches each subject as a poetic portrait, whether it's a tangled garden hose or a couple's embrace. "What you always hope for is the unexpected gesture," he said. "I ask them not to smile and look at me without expression — and then the expression comes out."