Artist Captures American Apparel Ads in Their "Natural Environment"

Gotta catch 'em all.

Image via Thomas Alleman

Anyone who has spent any amount of time strolling through any urban landscape can tell you of the ubiquity of the American Apparel billboard. The generally small, stark advertisements pop up wherever they can fit in: the sides of bodegas, above apartment buildings, on street corners, and on hillsides. But the over-styled looks of the models and the slick clothes don’t always jive with the neighborhoods in which they are placed.

To highlight this juxtaposition, photographer Thomas Alleman took to the streets of Los Angeles to capture where these billboards actually exist. Looking at the billboards in their “natural environment” seems to highlight a kind of discrepancy that goes beyond just demographics—these seem simply out of place.

Alleman has lived and worked in the Los Angeles area for more than 15 years, earning distinctions as the California Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 1995 and the Los Angeles Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 1996. This is his statement on the work:

American Apparel is an L.A.-based clothing manufacturer specializing in basic knit sportswear for moneyed young hipsters. AA’s controversial marketing campaign unfolds on smallish, five-foot-by-nine-foot billboards, often poised just above eye level. These signs don't live in a blue, uncluttered sky; they hunker down amongst the storefronts and cyclone fences and parking lots, interacting directly with an environment that's as visually chaotic as those ads are simple and banal and difficult to ignore.

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[via LAist]

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