LA DRIVE-BY is another unique photo book you might want to add to your shelves if you’re interested in a different view of Los Angeles.
Attention, photo book lovers and self-publishers! We’ve spotted another interesting project you might want to support on Kickstarter. LA DRIVE-BY, a photo book by Hamburg-based Michael Lange, promises to take us deep into the dark and obscure side of Los Angeles through a series of photos shot from a car during his titular drives.
LA DRIVE-BY showcases snaps shot by Lange from 1996 – 2001 on PolaPan35, a 35mm black and white instant slide film by Polaroid that was discontinued in 2000. With the images digitally unaltered, they retain the chemical changes from the last 20 years and bear “different layers of temporality.”
“Drifting thousands of miles through the endless city, I was confronted with obscure and dark places, the unpredictability and the giant pulls of the city,” Lange says of the photos he took while driving around Central and Southern Los Angeles during his frequent visits. “The book is about Los Angeles, the city of angels and cars, the far side of happiness, its vastness, and the desert in the city.”
Apart from the quirky black and white street snaps, LA DRIVE-BY features a unique format for a photo book, designed by Dutch book designer Sybren Kuiper. Several pages fold out to reveal the photos in up to eight times the original page size. This, according to the book designer, was done both to reflect Lange’s explorations around Los Angeles and give the reader a non-linear viewing experience — “like drifting through the city at random.”
The hard cover photo book will be printed and hand-bound in the Netherlands, and will contain 82 photos distributed across 20 fold-outs and 192 pages.
Do check out the Kickstarter campaign for LA DRIVE-BY if you’d like to support this self-published photo book project. You can grab a copy of the book for an early bird pledge of âĴ70 (about $82).
