New Deal

Jürgen Beck’s book is a glancing portrayal of this most-filmed of cities. Yet instead of resorting to the familiar, this series of photographs straddles time to capture the city through certain historical contradictions, illuminated and expounded by two essays from architect Wendy Gilmartin, and art historian David Misteli. It considers how to evoke the myriad ironies of time passing that the cityscape embodies. Complex fabrics of old hope and new failure, old failure and new hope. Nothing ever turns out the way it was supposed to. We start in the light. That famous LA light that gave birth to an industry is there in the not-quite whiteness of the cover’s uncanny glow. Drawling through traffic, a word-dense landscape that preys on the car-bound with advertising slogans promising this deal or that one. Please do not disembark your vehicle here. Interspersed with this street-view safari are eight images of the interior of the Bullocks Wilshire building. A cathedral of commerce that ope