Marla Hamburg Kennedy & Ben Stiller: Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles is a portrait of the city in photographs, one that seeks to diffuse the legends, the illusions, and instead offer an appreciation of Los Angeles as real and three-dimensional. Like L.A. itself, these pictures work through an intricate unfolding, from aerial view to streetscape, from sprawl to neighborhood, from the amorphous tangle of the freeway to the enclosed community of a single car. As much a process as a product, the book is a collection that we must navigate in increments, much the same way we navigate the city, reducing its vast shapelessness to something we can see. 

Editors Marla Hamburg Kennedy and Ben Stiller have gathered more than 225 pictorial representations by some of the most important artists and photographers of the last century and this one. The images, like Los Angeles, are dazzling, decadent, disturbing, bleak, and beautiful. Along with the carefully chosen shots by nearly one hundred photographers, a preface and foreword by the editors describe their deep affection for the city, while David L. Ulin's essay provides a critical and subtle look at Los Angeles, and a text by the Los Angeles Conservancy discusses the importance of saving its rich architectural heritage. Looking at Los Angeles is at once a lesson in history and culture, and a remarkable visual and written tribute to one of the world's great metropolises. 

Edited by Marla Hamburg Kennedy and Ben Stiller, with Jane Brown and Craig Krull.