Loved, hated, revered, scorned, real, imagined: this is Los Angeles. Looking at Los Angeles is a fascinating journey into the center of the city's heart and soul. Pictured within its pages is a Los Angeles of powerful dreams and startling realities. Editors Marla Hamburg Kennedy and Ben Stiller have gathered pictorial representations of Los Angeles from the last three-quarters of a century, resulting in this selection of more than 200 stunning, beautifully reproduced color and duotone depictions of the city from different eras and different points of view. Along with the carefully chosen images by approximately 100 photographers who have time again turned to Los Angeles for inspiration, a preface and foreword by the editors describe their great affection for the city, while David L. Ulin's essay offers a critical and loving look at Los Angeles. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the Los Angeles Conservancy, and the organization provides an essay about the importance of saving this city's rich architectural heritage. Looking at Los Angeles is at once a lesson in history, architecture, style, and culture, and a remarkable visual and written tribute to one of America's greatest cities. Includes photographs by: Robert Adams, John Baldessari, William Claxton, Will Connell, Joe Deal, John Divola, William Eggleston, Sam Fentress, Anthony Friedkin, John Humble, Dennis Keeley, Florian Maier-Aichen, Grant Mudford, Karin A. Mueller, Catherine Opie, Ed Ruscha, Stephen Shore, Julius Schulman, Joel Sternfeld, Timothy Street-Porter, John Swope, Andy Warhol, Julian Wasser, Robert Weingarten, Garry Winogrand, Max Yavno, and others.
David L. Ulin is book critic of the Los Angeles Times. From 2005 to 2010, he was the paper's book editor. He is the author of "The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time" and "The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith," selected as a best book of 2004 by the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle.
He is also the editor of three anthologies: "Cape Cod Noir," "Another City: Writing from Los Angeles," and the Library of America's "Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology," which won a 2002 California Book Award. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Black Clock, Columbia Journalism Review, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.
He was awarded a 2010 Southern California Independent Booksellers Association/Glenn Goldman Book Award for his work on "Los Angeles: Portrait of a City."
