Los Angeles

I find it difficult to render my experience of Los Angeles into words. I kept wondering whether it was a place at all. As an image it seems to work best in panoramic - doesn't stand up to close inspection. The lights of Sunset Strip are hypnotic from the Hollywood Hills - low-rent and grimly gauche from the ground. I found Downtown like a colony where the poor, mishapen, the pedestrians are contained - isolated amongst the tall buildings - ghosts of the city's beginning. But now I'm running out of adequate words so I'll hand you over to Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz