Former fashion photographer Désirée van Hoek worked from 2007 to 2015 on Skid Row in Los Angeles. This neighborhood in Downtown LA is home to some 15.000 (former) homeless people. In her photo book, Van Hoek tries to capture the humanity of the neighborhood by zooming in on its ‘material culture’. Her focus is on people’s dwellings and possessions, and the buildings and structures that shape their environment.
« Many of the ingredients you might find in fashion are here: colorful fabrics, incongruous textures, and especially people who, without assistants, producers or directors, have managed to convert founds assemblages into outfits and environments full of power and character. […] These photographs have made me fall in love with my city all over again. Désirée has managed to capture a part of our city that we, as the citizens of Los Angeles, too often overlook or ignore. She has done so with very great respect of her subjects and with an eye for hidden beauty. […] The photographs make me think differently about the architecture of our city. For the people of Skid Row, architecture, essentially that which protects and shelters, can be a shopping cart, a blanket, the sidewalk, a headscarf, a fence that acts a hanging device for all of my belongings, and cardboard signs that communicate as well as shields us from the sun and the rain. »
Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, director of the WUHO gallery in LA – October 2015.
BOOK
Skid Row
Désirée van Hoek
Introduction by Gale Holland
Designed by studio Mevis & Van Deursen
104 pages and eight individual portraits
ISBN 978-90-824149-0-5
$50.00
http://www.desireevanhoek.com
http://www.ideabooks.nl/9789082414905-desiree-van-hoek-skid-row
