KEN KARAGOZIAN

The exhibition will be accompanied by a new book, Wilshire Subway: The Making of the D Line Subway Extension, a photographic cultural history of the construction project written and edited by India Mandelkern and photographed by Karagozian. The book features a foreword by former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and additional guest essays by literary critic David L. Ulin, architect Leo Marmol, and urban planner James Rojas, which contextualize the project within broader conversations about LA’s political, social, and geological complexities.

Stretching nine miles from Koreatown to Westwood, the D Line Subway Extension represents a major turning point for public transit in Los Angeles. It is the longest subway project ever to tunnel through tar-infested sands, the most expensive project to date in Metro’s history (costing over $9.7 billion!), and one of the region’s most ambitious transportation investments in decades. The first section stretches from the existing Wilshire/Western station to a new station at Wilshire/La Cienega, measures 3.92 miles, and was built by the joint venture Skanska-Traylor-Shea.

“Given the long and fraught history of rail building ambition on Wilshire Boulevard, I was initially drawn to this project for historical reasons,” says Mandelkern. “But through my conversations with the tradespeople who built it, I quickly realized that the portraits tell a much more universal story about what it means to be an Angeleno today.”

Ken Karagozian is a San Fernando Valley-based photographer who has spent more than three decades documenting the return of rail to Los Angeles. His work has been published in LIFE Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and collected by The Huntington Library and Metro.