Gil Garcetti’s new focus is on Africa

AUDIENCES and voters aren’t that much different, which makes entertainment and politics insecure occupations. At the end of the day, all a person can really count on is the fact that they’ve kept faith with their convictions and their talent.

And sometimes that talent is an unexpected one. That’s what former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti discovered when he found himself out of office in 2000, after serving two terms.

With time on his hands, Garcetti -- who worked as a prosecutor for 32 years -- picked up his old 35-millimeter camera (the kind that requires the hand loading of film; nothing digital here). In the process he found a new career that has produced five books of photography, among them a critically acclaimed coffee-table tome documenting -- in evocative black and white -- the iron workers’ efforts to build Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Garcetti’s latest photographic collection, a book called “Water Is Key,” details the quest among West Africans to find clean water for their villages. Some of the images -- harrowing photos of women and children in northern Ghana and other locales -- are on display at UCLA’s Fowler Museum. (The exhibit closes Sunday. After that, the photos will be shown at Fremont College in Cerritos. The book, published by Balcony Press, sells for $65.)

Garcetti, a man who pursued the profession of prosecuting criminals with a firm belief that he was serving the greater good of society, is approaching his new avocation with the same fervor. “I want to shake people into action,” Garcetti said.

After leaving office, Garcetti traveled to West Africa with his wife, Sukey, for the first of several visits in 2001. Enchanted by the land and the villagers, Garcetti became determined to raise awareness about the water situation in the region.

“What was shocking to me was that over 70% of the people there do not have safe water,” Garcetti said recently over lunch at downtown’s Cafe Pinot. “People were crippled and blind. Girls don’t go to school because it’s their responsibility to find and carry water -- sometimes for miles -- back to the village. The biggest tragedy was learning that there is plenty of safe water. It’s all underground. They just don’t have the money to bring it up.”

Thus Garcetti’s project was born. He teamed with the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to produce a large black-and-white coffee-table book with photos of his trips to Niger, Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso.

The book includes more than 50 photographs that underscore the link between water and human health, as well as the dramatic economic successes that are finally achieved once safe water is tapped and delivered to villages.

Garcetti said he turned to famed architectural photographer Julius Shulman, who has become a mentor, for advice and guidance. Shulman, in turn, said that he finds the former prosecutor “astounding.”

Although he was always interested in photography (his father had built a darkroom in the family home where Garcetti was raised), he never took it seriously until after he left office. It was in early summer of 2001. Garcetti drove past the Disney Hall construction site and he became mesmerized, not only by the sculptural intricacy of the newly rising building but also by the men working on the structure. He pulled over and started taking pictures. He returned again and again to photograph the iron workers. The men urged him to put together a book.

“I kept saying, ‘No.’ One iron worker said, ‘This is going to become a famous building. Who are they going to thank? Frank Gehry. They’re not going to thank us, the iron workers. You have to do a book.”

Garcetti agreed. With that, his life took on new meaning.

As passionately as he felt about the Disney Hall book, however, Garcetti feels even more so about the West Africa project. Time, he warns, is of the essence.

Garcetti said one of his goals is to find 100,000 individuals who will contribute $10 or more to www.wateriskey.org, an umbrella organization for safe water projects in West Africa. He is also planning to lobby Congress on the issue.

“I’m fearless in asking people to help,” said Garcetti. “I’ve learned that from years of being a trial lawyer and politician. All they can do is say, ‘No.’ ”

But he’s learned that it’s easier to make the case when you come armed with photographic evidence.

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tina.daunt@latimes.com