Street photographer Max Yavno, one-time president of the Photo League, landed in California following his discharge from the military. His Los Angeles Book included "high and low cultural extremes, industrial intrusions, healthy recreation and sublime pedestrian oddities all exposed in the balmy surrealism of direct sunlight." His photograph of Muscle Beach is an index to post-World War II beach culture.

Max Yavno, Muscle Beach L.A., 1949 UCR/CMP Collection, Gift of Lorenzo Hernandez

A man and woman stand in the foreground facing inward gazing upon the carnival of an afternoon at the beach. Men toss women into the air; children stand upon the shoulders of adults; two women in street clothes sit upon the stand and watch the spectacle. The ocean is an unseen character seemingly forgotten by the party goers.

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