LIXENBERG, Dana. Imperial Courts 1993-2015.

(Amsterdam): Roma Publications, 2015. First edition. Softcover. 30.5cm by 24.2cm. An Epic long-term photographic archive of the Imperial Courts housing project in Watts, Los Angeles, by Dana Lixenberg. In the early 1990s, while in South Central Los Angeles on assignment for Vrij Nederland following the unrest that erupted after the Rodney King verdict, Lixenberg began a sustained documentary engagement with the residents of Imperial Courts, a housing project originally constructed in 1944 that became home to predominantly African-American migrants from the American South. Deeply affected by the combination of racial injustice, media simplification, and community frustration she encountered, Lixenberg returned repeatedly over the next twenty-two years, producing an intimate and complex portrait of the neighbourhood and its inhabitants.
Introduced to the community by Tony Bogard — described by Lixenberg as “an unofficial godfather of the community” — she spent years building trust among residents, including gang members and their families, before beginning the large-format black-and-white portraits for which the project became celebrated. Stripped of sensationalism and journalistic cliché, the photographs focus with exceptional formal precision and attentiveness on individuals who would rarely have been represented with such sustained dignity and care. Deliberately avoiding visual tropes associated with urban poverty and racialised media narratives, Lixenberg created one of the most important contemporary documentary studies of community, representation, and social history in postwar Los Angeles. A very good copy in wrappers with integral flaps.