Ken Gonzales-Day discusses Surface Tension: Murals, Signs, and Mark-Making in Los Angeles, a photographic journey to map out the city and make visible the larger cultural, socio-economic, and political forces that have shaped the place we have come to call Los Angeles.

In 1966, Mark di Suvero’s Artists’ Tower of Protest, created in collaboration with the Los Angeles–based Artists' Protest Committee, became a lightning rod for the anti-war movement. Over the next 50 years, as the tower was dismantled, reconfigured, and re-contextualized, history has had its intractable way with the original work.