MUSE-ings: Snapshots from the Arts District, Downtown Los Angeles

MUSE-ings: Snapshots from the Arts District, Downtown Los Angeles features on-the-fly images captured and shared by Melissa Richardson Banks daily through her award-winning Downtown Muse blog and social media. Richardson Banks says she is a collector of memories more than a photographer. “A real photographer,” she says, “owns a ‘real’ camera. I just take snapshots with my iPhone; mostly of temporary things that I love and don’t want to forget.” Collectively, her images reveal an insider’s glimpse into her urban neighborhood transformed by artists in the early 1980s and now quickly gaining widespread popularity. Seemingly, the point of view for each shot is more of someone who has lost a loved one than a tourist taking photos on vacation. A pile of bricks covered in graffiti from a demolished industrial building, luscious blossoms against stark concrete, blinding rooftop sunsets, skies crisscrossed by power lines, serpentine wire twirled around iron fences, and the promise of a new day as the sun rises over historic bridges are among the many images that evoke the sense of a place more pastoral or even more exotic than what you’d expect to find in the center of the nation’s second largest metropolitan area. The book includes 92 full-color photographs and an introductory essay by Melissa Richardson Banks. It was designed by Christy Addis Gutierrez.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Specifications: 92 color images and writings by Melissa Richardson Banks
Hardcover: 96 pages
Retail Cost: $25.00
Publisher: CauseConnect LLC; First U.S. edition
Publication Date: January 14, 2014
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0989114813
ISBN-13: 978-0989114813
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds