Dreamers in Dream City

From immigrants to billionaires, unknowns to the world-famous, surfers to moviemakers, quacks to rocket scientists -- Dreamers are attracted to Harry Chandler's Dream City.

Los Angeles and the metropolis that surrounds it is home to photographer Chandler--a fifth-generation Angeleno--and the fifty-four men and women he presents in compelling color portraits and biographies. Chandler contends--and every reader will certainly agree--that being in Dream City allowed these Dreamers to conjure bigger-than-life dreams and turn their every dream into a fantastic reality. A member of the famed Chandler family of Los Angeles Times fame, Chandler left the newspaper world behind, ventured into films and electronic media, and found a way to blend all three.

In addition to classic photojournalistic techniques, Chandler melds the eye of a moviemaker, the captured reality of a classic artist behind a lens, the exponential potential of digital enhancement and the passion of a history lover to create his own take on his L.A., his Dream City. Then he fills it with Dreamers of today and yesterday. Dreamers in Dream City. It takes one to know one.

Dreamers profiled: - The Builders: Abbott Kinney; Frank Gehry; Dr. Robert Schuller; Dorothy Buffum Chandler; Simon Rodia; Mia Lehrer; William Mulholland - The Inventors: Dick Rutan; George Barris; Hobie Alter; Dan Gurney; Donald Douglas; Reeves Callaway - The Artists: Ed Ruscha; Rudi Gernreich; Nobu Matsuhisa; Jim Morrison; Gajin Fujita; Raymond Chandler - The Folk Heroes: Arnold Schwarzenegger; Aimee Semple McPherson; Huell Howser; Charles Hatfield; Angelyne - The Activists: Helen Hunt Jackson; Tom Bradley; Andy Lipkis; Charles Lummis; Ben Caldwell; Upton Sinclair; Lewis MacAdams; Antonio Villaraigosa - The Entertainers: Jerry Bruckheimer; Billy Wilder; Young Actors; Gordon Davidson; Cecil B. DeMille; Nat King Cole; Greg MacGillivray; Ronald Reagan - The Entrepreneurs: Harry Chandler; Eli Broad; Howard Hughes; Edgar Acosta; Bill Gross; Creative Artists Agency Trainees; Gene Autry - The Discoverers: George Ellery Hale; Ray Bradbury; Walt Disney; Bob Rogers; Aldous Huxley; Bob Mitchell; Amelia Earhart

For more than twenty-five years, Harry Brant Chandler was a successful Los Angeles-based media executive at companies including Twentieth Century Fox, Showtime, CBS, the Los Angeles Times and Overture Services (now Yahoo Search). He now devotes most of his creative attention to his photography.

As a fifth-generation Southern Californian, Mr. Chandler is a descendant of prominent Angeleno families whose dreams helped shaped the city; from founding and running the Los Angeles Times to numerous civic, business and real-estate endeavors. His own personal relationship with many of the dreamers portrayed in Dreamers in Dream City brings a veracity and insight to the profiles he has written, and his inventive photographs have created compelling portraits of these inspirational Southern Californians, both past and present.