Shooting the Pier

After Pasadena photographer Christopher Grisanti shot his first pier, he felt instantly closer to the memory of his sister, Yvonne, who loved the shore, and who had died a few months before. He was also haunted by the structure’s stark beauty. Over two years and thousands of coastal miles, Grisanti snapped these platforms to the Pacific, building what may already be the most comprehensive collection of California pier images.

The piers--California has more than 100 stretching from Crescent City south to Imperial Beach--jut out of the state’s profile like eyelashes. The blessed ones seem to extend forever; the less fortunate are stubby, uneven. Grisanti has looked at piers from odd angles, at varying hours, in agreeable and inclement weather, documenting 70 of this motley bunch with help from project partner Marty Romero, who first suggested the photographic study as a book. (They have yet to submit the work-in-progress to a publisher.)

“I wanted to give a real-life feel to the piers,” Grisanti explains. “No trick lighting. Some have been washed away, a lot of them rebuilt. Not all of my photos look like postcards.” Like the chain-link fence defending Venice’s ocean strut. Grisanti’s favorite, a surfer at Pismo Beach, “captures the isolation, the loneliness.

“But I also noticed couples walking hand in hand or looking out at the ocean together. I imagine thousands of proposals on piers. You never see anybody rushing . . . there’s nothing to rush to.”

Often he thinks of his sister, “the only person in my life who encouraged me to do photography.”

“ ‘All right, Chris,’ ” he hears Yvonne’s voice as he watches a print develop. “ ‘This is cool.’ ”

* Mary Melton is the magazine’s research editor.