‘The boulevard of dreams’

SUNSET Boulevard is undoubtedly one of Los Angeles’ most famous streets, but does it serve as a connecting thread for the residents of the diverse neighborhoods it passes through on its way from downtown L.A. to the Pacific Ocean? It’s a question photographer Patrick Ecclesine appears poised to answer in his solo exhibit, “Faces of Sunset Boulevard,” which opens tonight at Los Angeles City Hall’s Bridge Gallery.

In this ongoing personal project consisting of about 100 photographs (24 of which are included in the show), Ecclesine looks to capture L.A.’s dreams, dreamers and, at times, nightmares using the thoroughfare as a focal point for impromptu and set-up portraits of its denizens. He also brought a sound recording device to the photo sessions and did some preliminary interviewing of his subjects to create a fuller story. Quotes from those interviews appear beneath the large prints in the exhibit.

Some of the images capture people on the street -- a Bosnian refugee who is now a stand-in on the ABC television show “Grey’s Anatomy,” a street poet, construction workers, a street vendor. Others depict prominent community workers and leaders such as L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William J. Bratton and attending officers. And still more show Hollywood insiders such as Henry Winkler and writer-producer Steven J. Cannell, as well as a plastic surgeon and a divorce attorney.

ECCLESINE describes his hometown as “worlds within worlds within worlds,” marveling at what he deems a relatively peaceful coexistence among residents with vast cultural differences.

“To me, Sunset Boulevard is the ultimate representation of that because it’s the boulevard of dreams, from the barrio to the beach,” he says.

Like Sunset, Ecclesine’s life has similarly wound through some diverse quarters. The project has taken him back to his roots. Literally born just off Sunset Boulevard, in the former Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, he spent the first few years of his life residing in a “terrible beat-up ramshackle neighborhood” off Western Avenue.

“It was like a carnival out there,” he recalls. “There were Haitian voodoo ceremonies on Saturday nights. There were drug addicts and prostitutes.”

MORE than two decades later, Ecclesine found himself working amid the world of film and TV as a still photographer on the Fox series “The O.C.” He recalls having brought his “Faces of Sunset” portfolio to the set, where he met a camera operator who is the brother of 4th District Councilman Tom LaBonge. Ecclesine had begun the “Sunset” project in 2004, but found it difficult to solicit city officials -- until LaBonge gave him a certificate of appreciation for his work. That helped open all the right doors, Ecclesine says.

This enabled him to orchestrate some ambitious set-up photo shoots. The one that he is most proud of involved Bratton. The image is one of the few in the show that was not actually taken on Sunset, but rather at a nearby helicopter facility, the C. Erwin Piper Technical Center. It took months of planning and negotiations, and picture-perfect coordination with a strategically hovering helicopter. The catch: Because of hectic city official schedules, the photographer had only about five minutes to capture his shot.

Ecclesine is also proud of the shoot he conducted with the L.A. County coroners.

“People are obsessed with ‘CSI,’ yet the coroners have never been photographed that way,” he says, describing the detailed set-up of his photo, complete with body bag and trucks. “They loved doing that.”

So did Ecclesine, who found the set-up productions to be the most challenging of his 170 Sunset project shoots. In addition, he says that shooting subjects who are in the public eye is a challenge because “they have defense mechanisms already in place, because they’ve dealt with it so many times.”

Conversely, he found it easier to photograph street subjects impromptu because “they’re in their humanity, in their element.”

Regardless, Ecclesine says he appreciates chronicling all walks of life: They’re all “part of Los Angeles -- the superficial and the deep.”

weekend@latimes.com

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‘Faces of Sunset Boulevard’

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Where: Los Angeles City Hall, Bridge Gallery, 200 N. Spring St., L.A.

When: Opening reception, 8 p.m. today. Regular hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays

Ends: May 4

Price: Free, but photo ID required

Info: (323) 314-8000, www.facesofsunset.com