Gwen Goldman ’21

Gwen Goldman

I was born and raised in the San Fernando valley. Sort of. My father and mother both worked in Beverly Hills, my father as a tennis pro, my mother, first as a model, then realtor. Now she holds an ambiguous title and lives on a farm in rural Virginia. Los Angeles was too much for her. Cities can eat people up. My stepfather says all the time, “There is no geographical fix for a spiritual problem,” and I think for the most part he is right, but people and space are a lot more complicated than that. People adapt to the the habitat that they are forced to exist in. It’s a matter of survival. Like a chameleon or a cuttlefish, we disguise ourselves and change our shape to hide in the space around us. Nobody wants to be eaten. But what color really is a chameleon? Green is the cop out answer. I wanted to focus on space, and people’s ties to the space they are forced to adapt into. I as a person use humor to deal with uncomfortable situations, it’s my defense mechanism. For this project I explored these uncomfortable spaces in Los Angeles and tried to discuss how we disguise ourselves to fit in.