Los Angeles Archives No.1781 — A new chapter in the NSD51/50 editions
With the release of Los Angeles, a new volume expands the ongoing Archives collection — a series of collectible books each named after a city and conceived as part of a wider photographic testimony. In this edition, Los Angeles emerges as a landscape of contrasts, where mythology and reality collide, revealing layers of urban life often hidden beneath the image of the “City of Angels.”
The Archives series is driven by a commitment to direct observation, and Los Angeles continues this approach through raw and powerful black and white photography. Stripped of color, the images emphasize structure, light, and human presence, reinforcing a visual language grounded in honesty rather than spectacle. The monochrome palette heightens the sense of tension and materiality, allowing the city’s surfaces — concrete, skin, signage, shadow — to carry their own narrative weight.
This monograph moves beyond the cinematic façade commonly associated with Los Angeles, immersing the viewer in neighborhoods shaped by resilience, labor, and survival. Streets become stages for everyday realities: moments of solitude, exchanges between communities, traces of economic disparity, and the constant negotiation of space. Rather than framing the city through glamour, the work focuses on the lived experience of those who form its backbone.
At the heart of the book is a close engagement with the tattoo community, where studios function as cultural hubs and spaces of transmission. Tattooing is approached as a social language — a practice rooted in identity, memory, and belonging. Bodies become living archives, bearing marks that speak to personal histories as well as collective narratives embedded in the urban environment.
Through careful sequencing, Los Angeles unfolds as an immersive journey rather than a collection of isolated photographs. Each image builds upon the next, creating a rhythm that mirrors the movement of the city itself. This approach reflects the philosophy of the Archives collection: to produce books that are not only visual documents but also experiential objects, inviting viewers to engage slowly and physically with the work.
By documenting the social and economic struggles present within these communities, Los Angeles seeks to challenge familiar representations of the city. It aims to reveal a deeper cultural fabric — one shaped by endurance, creativity, and the complexity of coexistence — offering a perspective that extends beyond conventional depictions of urban America.
As part of the Archives series, this volume contributes to a growing body of work dedicated to recording cities through lived proximity and material presence. Los Angeles stands as both an independent monograph and another piece of a long-term archive, continuing the effort to map the history and culture of urban spaces through images grounded in reality.
Size : 13 × 20 cm (5.12 × 7.84 in.)
Hard-cover silk matt
Paper silk-matt 105 gsm
140 pages
Language : english
Printed in USA
The first printing was published in 2025.
ISBN : 9798295076176
