Photographer Dana Lixenberg’s 22-Year-Long Series In One Of LA’s Oldest Housing Projects

Dana Lixenberg

Photographer Dana Lixenberg is the woman behind a whole stack of iconic images of your favourite rappers of yesteryear. A slightly worse-for-wear Puff Daddy laying cocooned on a bed in a fluffy towelling robe surrounded by archaic communication devices, Biggie Smalls counting 50 dollar bills in an acid-tripping jumper, a doe-eyed Tupac gazing soulfully into the camera lens: looking through Dana’s archive brings a needle and thread to all the uncredited images you’ve seen floating around the internet but never had a clue as to their origins.

More info: Imperial Courts Project (h/t: itsnicethat)

Dana Lixenberg

Dana’s series, Imperial Courts, 1993-2015, which as the title suggests was captured in Imperial Courts, a social housing project in LA: one of the city’s oldest. It all started when, in the aftermath of race riots in 1992, Dana was commissioned by Dutch publication Vrij Nederland to photograph the city’s reconstruction. From there, a 22-year long project grew to span a book, exhibition and web documentary, Imperial Courts which tells the story of a place which became the epicentre of rioting against racial discrimination by the project’s African American residents in 1965 and 1992.

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg