Los Angeles County Lifeguard Stations

The boundary between continent and sea is marked and guarded by a unique architectural typology. It has visibly become a symbol of the littoral as much as its design enables visibility. A raised observation platform, glass tilted downward at a glare-free angle, with a doubly-protective sunshade (opened to block the sun, closed to guard the guard shack) all enable the stations to serve its function: watching the ocean.

For more than a decade I have photographed these stations, both in Southern California and abroad (including a Mexican outpost whose jurisdiction ends at the US border and another at the dry center of landlocked Outer Mongolia). Portions of the collection has been published in the monograph Stations of the Pacific Littoral (1999) and the magazine H2O (2001).

rick miller