California Dreaming

California Dreaming is photographer Paul Jasmin’s celebration of the climate and the youth of Los Angeles, a city he has lovingly documented in previous volumes such as Hollywood Cowboy and Lost Angeles.Most of the photographs printed here were shot in and around Jasmin’s fascinating apartment on Wilshire Boulevard (in a building thatWilliam Randolph Hearst once bought as a love-nest for Marion Davies), and express both the dreams of the youths Jasmin photographs and Jasmin’s own candidly vicarious reveling in their youth and the future before them:“that is my fantasy life,” he avows,“they keep me dreaming.” California Dreaming makes the ultimate argument for Los Angeles as a golden mirage of both glamorous aspiration and sunsoaked leisure, and also describes Jasmin’s additional roles as a teacher at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena—where he meets most of his subjects in this monograph— and as a legendary Hollywood host and connoisseur of the city’s many charms.