Description
Book SynopsisA subversive portrait of Beverly Hills in a gorgeous leporello format
This leporello publication presents Brooklyn-based photographer Stephen Hilger's (born 1975) color photographs of service alleys and the backside of houses separating the public from the private in the affluent suburb of Beverly Hills, Californiaa more anomalous view of the place by depicting the physical and symbolic spaces behind the homes of the area's wealthy residents. Eva Díaz has written that Hilger's emphasis suggests that Beverly Hills is actually two cities, a front' city of impeccably maintained homes and a back' city that covertly services the front illusion. Hilger photographed their graffiti, security signage, crammed garbage cans, unaesthetic car parks and overgrown vegetation; the maintenance staff who work nearby; and the alleys' most indelible feature, narrow, high walls that denote a claustrophobic refusal of inspection.
In the Alley features 22 panoramic photogr
Trade Review
Hilger, I suspect, isn’t striving for reconciliation, but rather for clarity, accuracy, ambiguity, and complexity. We find all of these and more in his images, which reveal still more the longer you linger over them. -- Matthew Specktor * Los Angeles Review of Books *
