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

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