Central Library, Chinatown, and Little Tokyo Branch Libraries will close at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, June 11 and Thursday, June 12.

The Library will be closed on Thursday, June 19, 2025, in observance of Juneteenth.

It Really is a River: Documenting an Iconic Urban Waterway

August 3, 2022 through January 22, 2023

Exhibit Curated by Tilly Hinton and Char Miller

Encounters with the Los Angeles River have a way of intriguing, educating, and inspiring locals and visitors alike. It’s an almost otherworldly place, a location for ephemeral encounters that would be lost and forgotten but for photographers, who preserve river memories in pixels and in ink. These photos are as essential as they are intriguing. This exhibition combines historic images in the Los Angeles Public Library Photo with contemporary images donated to the library’s collection in 2022 by LA River X alumni.

This collaborative exhibition was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Photo Friends of the Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

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