A New Focus

By Jeffrey Ressner

Gil Garcetti is used to being in front of the cameras. As a former district attorney for Los Angeles County, the suave prosecutor with silver hair and movie-star looks faced the media in practically every big homicide case of the 1990s, from O.J. Simpson to the Menendez brothers. But shortly after Garcetti lost a re-election bid five years ago, his career made a sharp turn. Today he can be found behind the lens, working as a professional photographer, with three acclaimed books to his credit as well as gallery exhibitions and a profitable side business selling prints of his photos.

Garcetti's dramatic life change came unexpectedly. Driving near his old office in downtown L.A., he glimpsed a worker 110 ft. above the ground, doing construction on the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The sight inspired Garcetti--a longtime amateur photographer--to rush home and grab his cameras. "When I first saw that ironworker crawling up on that high arch beam, a rainbow shined down and showed me a use for my talents," he says, sounding more like a dreamy artist than a hardened attorney making opening arguments. "An opportunity fell from the sky."

The epiphany led to a yearlong project in which Garcetti photographed workers joining and welding steel beams to assemble the curvy, complex framework of Frank Gehry's architecture. Stepping gingerly around the dangerously suspended girders with a 35-mm Nikon but no tether, Garcetti was literally and emotionally unharnessed.

"Magic happens in life, and you have to take advantage of it," he says. Following encouragement by the workers whose craft he had been documenting, Garcetti published Iron, a striking book of his sky-high images, with all proceeds going to the ironworkers' scholarship fund. He followed that with Frozen Music, a limited-edition photo essay about the completed building. This month his latest work, a dazzling travelogue titled Dance in Cuba, hits the bookstores (published, like his previous books, by Balcony Press).

Garcetti had wanted to see Cuba for years, but it wasn't until after he left the D.A.'s office that he found the time to travel there. The journey was worth the wait. His new volume is rich with grainy photos of dancers rehearsing under poor conditions, swathed in tropical shadows, exposing strong body language and facial expressions that are at once haunting and joyful, often within the same frame."Wow, wow, wow!" says Garcetti with a smile, recalling the first day on the island when he and his wife encountered an energetic Afro-Cuban dance troupe marching down a Havana street to promote a performance. "I saw their spirit, their joy, and once the door was open, these dancers opened their hearts to me."

Garcetti's zeal for photography reaches back "as far as I can remember," he says, though it heightened after the 1969 birth of his daughter Dana. Throughout his legal career he carried one camera loaded with black-and-white film in his pocket, another with color in his briefcase, and he took candid snaps of crazy street scenes, staid political events, even solemn police funerals. He attended night-school photography classes for more than four years and covered his office with his framed pictures but never considered publishing his work for fear of snarky criticism.

He needn't have worried. His work has received raves from both critics and casual viewers. (American Photo magazine referred to Garcetti, 64, as a "prodigy," an appellation he relishes.) Partly as a result of the warm reception, he has abandoned any previously held notions of returning to law or politics. "I would have liked to have been Governor of California, but now that's far from being a passion," he says. "I've also been offered obscene amounts of money to handle legal cases and turned them down. There's more to life. I found another calling."

Describing himself as the "poster child for career change," Garcetti tells young and old alike that it's never too early--or too late--to pursue a passion. "Fear is almost natural, but people should be calculated risktakers," he says. "Look at what it is you really care about, and then do it. From risk often come great things."

Garcetti has his next five book ideas lined up, including two about L.A. life; one about bicyclists in Paris; a behind-the-scenes look at the TV legal drama The Closer (on which he serves as consulting producer); and an ambitious project about safe water, health and the empowerment of women in West Africa.

Beyond the gratification of helping with humanitarian efforts and being recognized for his talents, there's another benefit Garcetti is reaping from his new career: people no longer identify him solely with the failed Simpson prosecution. "It comes up, but it's usually not the first thing people ask me about now," he says. Yes, he has heard all the jokes about mug shots and crime-scene photos, brushing them aside good-naturedly. "I get a kick out of how hard it is for people to take me seriously as an accomplished photographer," he says. "I tell my lawyer friends that we're probably all artists in some respect, if you just scratch the surface and get the opportunity. I got lucky. I've been given that opportunity."