Zuma #24

John Divola incorporated the happenings and performances common to art in the 1970s into his photographs, straddling the line between witness and participant. Initially, he spray-painted the interiors of abandoned houses—substitutes for a studio he did not have—in silver so that he could photograph the walls in black-and-white. When he came across a vacant Zuma Beach home, he was drawn to the crumbling structure's ocean-view windows. Over repeated visits he began to appreciate the subtle changes wrought by others—empty beer cans or remnants of an indoor campfire—and began altering the site himself, spray-painting various surfaces. The play between this mark-making and the ocean backdrop demanded he switch to color film. For Divola, his intervention and documentation are integrally linked: "My acts, my painting, my photographing, my considering, are part of, not separate from, this process of evolution and change."