The Leica Gallery Los Angeles is pleased to announce Peter Turnley: Paris/California, a new exhibition that brings together, for the first time, the photographer’s long-unseen images of California from 1975 alongside a selection of his recent work from Paris. Internationally renowned for over five decades of photojournalism and more than forty Newsweek covers, Turnley presents a body of work that resonates with striking relevance, revealing the human realities at the heart of two very different places and moments in time. In the summer of 1975, at the age of twenty, Turnley was commissioned by the California Office of Economic Opportunity to travel throughout the state and document the everyday experiences of working-class and low-income communities. Over four months spent driving across California in a small Volkswagen, he photographed migrant farmworkers in the San Joaquin Valley, families striving to make ends meet in urban neighborhoods, and itinerant laborers riding freight trains in search of work. Although intended for a public government report, the photographs were never released. With Peter Turnley: Paris/California, they are finally presented to the public after five decades, offering an intimate, direct, and deeply human portrait of a California seldom represented in the cultural imagination. These historic images are presented alongside Turnley’s recent photographs from Paris, created during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Walking the streets daily, he portrayed the essential workers, caregivers, and residents who sustained their communities throughout the crisis, capturing the same emotional clarity and empathy that permeated his early California work. Seen together, the two series highlight the continuity of Turnley’s photographic vision: a commitment to proximity, authenticity, and the dignity of ordinary people. They also reflect ongoing social tensions, reminding viewers that many of the challenges faced by California’s working poor in 1975—particularly agricultural laborers—remain unresolved today.
On the occasion of the exhibition, Turnley will also present and sign his new book The Other California – 1975, which brings together the full body of work from this pivotal project.