From the Washington Press
by Molly Peters and Chloe Coleman
I grew up not far from here and this area was always regarded as a prime place to horses and riding. My brother John Beal had a horse here for a while. Glad to know it still exists.
Photographer Molly Peters loved riding horses as a child and then as a teenager. After living and working on Martha’s Vineyard and in New York City and Rome, she relocated to California, where she found herself rekindling that early love and combining it with her present life as a photographer. She told In Sight about how that happened:
“Nestled along the Los Angeles River in California, on the northern side of Griffith Park, the Rancho district is a small equestrian oasis. It’s just down the street from major studios, including Disney Animation and Warner Bros., but the neighborhood is zoned for livestock. Crossing signals along Riverside Drive have buttons at rider-height, local laundromats have signs forbidding the washing of horse blankets, and grocery stores carry 50-pound bags of carrots. It’s not uncommon for people to keep their horses in their backyards.
“Shortly after moving to Burbank in the fall of 2014, I received access, through friends, to exercise first one horse and then, more recently, a couple more. After more than a decade had passed since the riding lessons of my childhood and early teenage years, the equestrian world opened up to me again. I began to explore and document it photographically almost immediately, mostly with my iPhone. On horseback, I can escape the suburban sprawl of the San Fernando Valley and disappear into the miles of bridle trails in the park, spotting wildlife along the way, and even riding out to the Hollywood Sign for an overlook across the entire city of Los Angeles.”
You can see more of Peters’s work on her website, mollypetersphoto.com.
