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Old Posted Jul 1, 2020, 5:58 PM
corriganville corriganville is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2013
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality View Post
Here is another intriguing Edward Weston photograph.

The title is "Stacked Boat" c.1939


At first I passed over the generically named thumbnail but then I noticed the odd shape of the "boats" and realized they were gondolas!
My insane vivid imagination made me think the gondolas might be remnants from the old tourist canals in Venice (the California one)



getty

But the information with the photograph describes the image as the MGM Back-Lot. (the back-lot was long gone by the time I worked at MGM
but I knew where it was located. I don't remember any oil wells being that close to the site)

At first I was disappointed the boat were studio props but perhaps MGM purchased them from whomever owned the gondolas in Venice
(was it Abbot Kinney?)



As is often the case: I can't (re)locate the photograph in the Getty collection but luckily I took a screengrab of the information. (shown BELOW)


getty / note the three different dates.




As a reminder: I recently posted a Weston photograph of half a cabin on the Paramount Back-Lot. . . .Here

.

The gondola boats are sitting on the MGM backlot #3. Just to the south of that backlot is a hill with the Inglewood Oil Field which still has oil wells on it. West Los Angeles College is directly south of where the backlot used to be. This backlot #3 had a Tarzan jungle and at least 2 separate western streets, among many other sets.
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