WILLIAM

Today I talked to William.

I drive by the sea and decide to stop my car to enjoy the day for a moment and watch the boats leave the harbor. On my left side, I see the Marina del Rey harbor and the buzzing city. On my right side, the opening to the vast ocean. The wind is strong and refreshing. Three crabs are playing on the greenish-brown rocks. They crawl from the sunny to the shady side and follow the comings and goings of the water. Next to me a man with a fishing pole stands still. He is wearing a dark ski jacket. His eyes look tired and he has a cold cigarette butt squeezed between his lips. "Are you a fisherman?" I ask. "Yeah," he answers without looking at me. He sits down on the floor, opens a tin box, and cuts a piece of slimy squid. I sit down cross-legged on the concrete about eight feet from him. Above us a black pelican starts to dive and suddenly changes his mind. The man continues to speak, still watching only his hands. "I bought the squid frozen at Redondo Beach. I walked all the way from there. It took me from last night to this morning to get here." Half of his words get swept away by the wind. You can tell that extended loneliness has made that man gruff. He puts the bait on the hook and stands up. I imitate him. And with a powerful movement, he throws the line in the distance. It creates a long sharp hissing sound. His name is William. He is forty-one years old and was born in Ontario, California.

"What kind of fish do you usually catch?" I ask William. "All kind. Small, big, medium. Look at the bird!" he exclaims. The black pelican dives into the sea with a big splash. "There's fish around here," says William with optimism. The bird comes back to the surface. He holds a silver fish in his bill. We watch the fish move for a while and finally disappear in the bird's throat. I ask William where he lives. "In the street," he says. "I've been living in the street since I was seventeen. And I've been fishing around Redondo Beach since then." - "What happened?" I ask. "Mother. Father. Disaster. It's a long story," he replies. We stay silent for a long moment, staring at the line that doesn't move. A few sailing boats pass by. William throws the line again. He catches fish once in a while "when they are hungry enough to bite." When it happens he sells it to the fish market. This is how he makes his money. In the windy sky above us, the same pelican comes back. "He's gonna dive again, he's gonna dive again, here we go, here we go..." says William in his swaying Afro-American accent. Then he throws the line another time. "You can tell I'm an impatient fisherman, huh?" he asks. And this makes me laugh.

No fish. William decides to go to another spot close to this one. I follow him there. We reach a wooden bridge that opens on a canal bordered with luxurious houses. This place is called the Ballona Lagoon. In the rapid current, hundreds of tiny shiny fish are milling around. William slowly lets his line go down. But the bite is so light that as soon as it touches the stream, it gets carried away. A little further on the bridge, I watch a chubby teenage boy clumsily kiss a girl. She giggles and kisses him back. When I ask William if I could take a picture of him, he refuses right away. "I had my picture taken once and the person reported me to the police." I decide to take a picture of the fishing pole with William's hands on it. I write a few words in my notepad. Suddenly William turns towards me. He looks me straight in the eyes: "Take it." He points at my camera with a grave face. "Show them," he adds. I take a first picture. And a second one. This time, William smiles.

KATIE & JEFF

Today I talked to Katie and Jeff.

I'm walking past the Hollywood Museum when a girl standing next to a camera shouts in my direction: "Could we take a picture of you?" - "Well, yes. What is that for?" I ask. "It's for Travel and Leisure," she answers. I agree and strike a few awkward pauses. It's pretty ironic to find myself pausing for someone while I'm actually looking for a person to photograph. Katie is a freelance photographer and her assistant - who is also her boyfriend - is Jeff. She is a direct, daring girl who doesn't seem afraid of approaching people spontaneously. Katie and Jeff are 27 and 26 years old. They met at the California Institute of the Arts where they were both studying photography. Today, they are making pictures to go with an article that will come out in Travel and Leisure's September issue. I ask them if I could follow them around while they work. They agree and we enter the Hollywood Museum together.

In the entrance hall, a large shiny chandelier hangs from the high ceiling. A faded rumba stresses the obsolete style of the place. I notice a sickly but discreet old cooking oil smell. Through a door ajar, I see Mel's Drive-In, the restaurant next door. At the ticket desk a perfectly groomed lady welcomes the tourists one by one. She wears a fitted pink skirt and a white flowery blouse. Her hair is tied in a tight chignon and her makeup - ruby lips and white skin - looks perfect.

The Hollywood Museum is the authentic Max Factor building where all the major actresses would come to buy their beauty products about a hundred years ago. Katie, Jeff and I enter the make-up rooms. The light blue room is "For Blondes only", the currant and beige "For Brunettes only", and the pink one "For Brownettes only". "This room will shoot better," says Katie while she peeks into the pink room. Jeff helps her set the camera in a good place. This room looks like a giant candy: the walls, carpet and ceiling are pink. An original poster of Judy Garland stands next to a dressing table covered with powders, lipsticks, and makeup accessories. Everything seems left in place by an actress who just left. Jeff measures the light and gives Katie the value. She starts to shoot. They work quietly together, exchanging only a word from time to time. In the blue room, the final scene of "Gentlemen prefer Blondes" plays on a TV. June 1st would have been Marilyn Monroe's 84th birthday. At that date, the museum opened the largest temporary exhibition in the world called "Marilyn Remembered". Private collectors and museums sent all kind of objects related to Marilyn: a fridge, personal photos, dresses, a pill bottle, a fox fur, and many more.

"I'd like to shoot Hannibal Lecter's cell," says Katie. In the stairs to the basement, we hear a creepy music and the light grows dimmer at every step we make. The basement is a mix between a shabby prison and a haunted house. The light is so low that I can hardly see the red brick walls. There are portraits of vampires and headless women here and there. Katie adjusts the height of the tripod and chooses a long time of exposure to shoot the cell. "There's somebody lying there," says Jeff. A body wrapped in a white linen lies in a dark corner right behind us. It makes me slightly jump.

The shoot is over. In less than a minute, Katie and Jeff pack their material. We come back to the bright light on the street. A family of red-face tourists wearing identical t-shirts passes by. "Could I take a picture of you?" Katie asks. "No, I've had my picture taken too much these days. We just came back from a cruise," says the father, and he goes off his way. Katie, Jeff and I split on a friendly note. They have more pictures to make and head towards another group of people. I go the opposite way and let myself slowly disappear into the crowded street.