CRAIG GRITZEN PHOTOGRAPHY / FIELD. NOTES. LA. / 0021 / LINCOLN HEIGHTS / 2026
The Brewery Artwalk,
A City Within a City
An observation of the people, light, architecture,
and creative lives inside one of Los Angeles'
most distinctive artist communities.
Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles. November 2026.
I came to the Brewery Artwalk to photograph art. I left thinking just as much about the people, the buildings, and the spaces in between.
The Brewery sits in Lincoln Heights, a few miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. From the outside, the complex still carries its industrial past: weathered lettering, brick buildings, metal walkways, and smokestacks rising above the rooftops.
Inside, those same buildings have become a working community of artists. The November 2026 Artwalk opened studio doors to visitors, offering a glimpse into spaces that are normally far more private.
I wanted to photograph the relationship between those two worlds: the monumental architecture of the former brewery and the intimate, individual creative lives unfolding inside it.
There is a long history behind these walls.
Brewing began on the site in 1897. The complex later produced Eastside beer and eventually became part of Pabst's operations. After the brewery closed in 1979, the Carlson family acquired the property.
Los Angeles' 1982 Artist-in-Residence ordinance helped make the conversion of industrial buildings into artist live/work spaces possible. The Brewery evolved into a large community of artist lofts, preserving much of the physical character of the former industrial campus.
That history was visible everywhere I walked. I wasn't interested in making the buildings look new. Their surfaces, age, and imperfections were part of what made them worth photographing.
A building tells you what a place was. The people inside reveal what it has become.
Behind each door was a different visual language.
Some studios were full of people and conversation. Others felt quiet, almost private. There were installations occupying entire rooms, small collections of framed work, ceramics, graphic prints, and experiments in light.
What caught my attention was often the relationship between the work and its surroundings. A sculpture changed the scale of a room. A wall of small pieces became a larger composition. A person standing in front of an artwork briefly became part of the scene.
I like photographing those moments of overlap. They suggest something beyond the individual object: a person encountering the work, and an environment that helps shape that encounter.
The light was another subject entirely.
I tend to be drawn toward darker environments, where small amounts of light carry more weight. The Brewery offered plenty of those moments: a passage fading into shadow, an illuminated object against a dark wall, or someone briefly separated from the background.
Rather than illuminate everything equally, I look for the places where light gives a scene its tension. Darkness can establish space just as effectively as brightness. Sometimes what you cannot quite see is what makes a frame interesting.
I want my photographs to hold that feeling, not simply document what was there.
I am less interested in showing everything than in finding the detail that makes you want to look a little longer.
What makes the Brewery unusual is that the studios are part of an actual residential community.
The artists aren't simply exhibiting in a temporary venue. The rooms are places where work is made, materials are stored, ideas are tested, and daily life unfolds.
That becomes visible in photographs through details that might otherwise be overlooked: a work surface, an arrangement of objects, the way an artist has occupied a corner, or the distance between a visitor and a piece on the wall.
It is the human evidence of a place. And for me, that is often where a photograph begins to move beyond documentation.
Eventually I found myself outside again, looking back toward the city.
The light had begun to fall. Walkways and rooftops became silhouettes against the sky. Beyond the buildings, downtown Los Angeles was still visible, a reminder that this unusually self-contained creative community is part of a much larger city.
I waited for figures to move through the frame. Against the industrial structure and evening light, their presence gave the architecture scale and something more difficult to define: a sense of life continuing beyond the photograph.
