Torbjørn Rødland expertly navigates the possibilities of photography using film and traditional darkroom processing. He is well versed in the tropes of commercial photography and calls on them in his work to yield highly emotional, tactile, and unexpected images. The Ring typifies Rødland’s interest in visually juxtaposing opposites such as young/old, wet/dry, or dark/light. In this image, a white elderly woman’s hand wrestles with the hand of a younger, darker-skinned woman.

As a young boy growing up in the 1940s at Western Avenue and 90th Street in South Los Angeles, Pat O’Neill occasionally went to the dump with his father as a way to pass the time. In those years, Los Angeles was quickly modernizing and entering the boom of midcentury consumerism, becoming a place where Hollywood met the growing aerospace, music, and fashion industries. These themes are evident in Bump City.