The latest show at Kopeikin Gallery in Culver City offers serene images of industrial parks and other landscapes by photographer J. Bennett Fitts. As the New York Times noted back in 2006, the young California artist's work "owes something to Ed Ruscha and Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like them, Mr. Fitts has inventoried an unlovely feature of the modern environment in lucidly objectifying images. In contrast to the Bechers' quasiscientific approach and Mr. Ruscha's deadpan perspective, however, Mr. Fitts's pictures have elegiac feelings and metaphorical overtones."

The show's opening reception is this Saturday, November 2, from 6 to 8 pm. As always, it is free, and the public is welcomed.

Here's what Fitts has to say about the new work:

In photography my interest has always been held by landscapes; never the heroic imagery most people have come to associate with the term landscape, but rather the beautifully subtle and banal work of the photographers associated with the new topograhics movement [who] focused on a "social landscape" that explored the way in which man impacts the natural environment. They focused on new subject matter as well, creating imagery that avoided the common themes beauty and emotion.... In contrast to them, I have chosen a non-industrial subject matter as well as, purposely setting out to achieve a certain sense of aesthetic beauty in all of my images.