The self-taught photographer Gusmano Cesaretti grew up in Lucca, Italy, but as a child he fell in love with America through movies, jazz and the work of Beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. He arrived in the United States at age 19 on the day Kennedy was assassinated, and eventually made his way to California, where he found work in the photo department of the Huntington Library in Pasadena. It was during this time, in the early 1970s, that Cesaretti began to explore the Latino neighborhood of East L.A., photographing the people he met and the graffiti that decorated the buildings. These photographs are "not just documentation" but "remarkable works of art" writes Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in the introduction to a new book that surveys two decades of Cesaretti's images. In addition to their formal strength, they were infused with tremendous human sympathy. Though much of Cesaretti's work focus on narrow subcultures in California - the members of the Klique car club and graffiti artists in East L.A., punks in Chinatown, hippies in San Francisco, a Vietnamese refugee camp at Camp Pendleton - he ranges farther afield as well. There are images of a Muslim village in Thailand, a scrap yard in Chicago and a series from his trip to visit Maria Sabina, the "Magic Mushroom" healer in Oaxaca, Mexico. Most are rendered in grainy, high-contrast black and white, a signature style that Cesaretti achieved with some unconventional dark room techniques, like kicking a developer-filled tank across the room to agitate the film and heating the tank up with a cigarette lighter. How did an Italian immigrant gain access to such a notoriously tough and insular part of his adopted city? Cesaretti, in an interview with the curator Aaron Rose, the book's editor, says that his foreignness was instrumental to gaining the trust of the people he met. Deitch attributes Cesaretti's success to an unusually warm and open way of being. "Upon meeting Gusmano, I immediately understood the secret to his rapport with some of the toughest characters in Los Angeles," he writes. He has a warmth and generosity that turns an introductory handshake into a bear hug within a matter of seconds. Gusmano Cesaretti will be signing copies of "Fragments of Los Angeles, 1969-1989" (Damiani; $50) on June 16 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Family Bookstore in Los Angeles; 436 North Fairfax Avenue; familylosangeles.com.