Robert Ginder’s street scenes of Los Angeles focus primarily on humble and modest California bungalows; the Spanish version is usually a white or pink stucco with red tile roofs and a small portico. These affordable small homes were intended for aspiring lower to middle class buyers in rapidly growing areas like Southern California in the 1920s but though these charming houses are prized for their historic legacy, lot values now far exceed home values and they are being razed.

Ginder’s “portraits” of these homes honor the hope and pride that they represented for their owners. He depicts them on wood panels with an arched top and a gold leaf sky in the manner of a religious icon, sanctifying their enduring presence and venerating the people who spent their lives within them. They are holy dwellings. His paintings also prominently feature the distinctive tall fan palms and long frond date palms that became identifiable with the Los Angeles skyline when thousands of them were planted in the 1920s in the years leading up to the 1932 Olympics. As these trees have a lifespan of about 100 years, their demise, like the bungalows born of the same era, is imminent. Ginder’s exhibition, The Treasures of the Nabe, features a group of his smallest variations of these bungalow portraits made over the past two years.

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