At Skylight: Désirée Van Hoek presents TALKING ABOUT L.A.

Photographer Désirée van Hoek has made downtown Los Angeles her working area. After 'Skid Row' (2015) and 'Notes on Downtown' (2022), 'Talking about LA' is her third book about the historic core of the American metropolis. This time, Van Hoek focuses on the typography around Broadway, the vibrant thoroughfare that divides the city in east and west, and that has seen countless transformations over the years. She teams up with local writer and historian Norman M. Klein, who, on the basis of (noir) films, literature, and personal memory, wrote an essay about the erasure of memory in the neighbourhood.

Désirée van Hoek is a Dutch photographer, who works on and off in Los Angeles since 2007. She published two acclaimed books about the city. Skid Row (2015) focused on the underprivileged neighborhood of the same name, Notes on Downtown (2022) on the recent gentrification of the downtown area. Skid Row, designed by Mevis & Van Deursen and with an introduction by LA Times-writer Gale Holland, was voted one of the Best Dutch and Belgian Book Designs of 2015.