LA's dark side: Grit, grime and horror from the 1920s-1950s, as seen through the camera lens

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In the years following the Second World War, Los Angeles was a city awakening to its darker side, transforming itself from a backwater town to a gleaming metropolis and city of the future. But along the way a tarnished patina began to coat its ever-more glamorous facade. As thousands flocked to the city with their dreams and desires, so too came get-rich-quick schemes, phoney religions, organised crime and corruption.

Taschen’s visual history photo book Dark City brings together images from archives, museums, newspaper photo morgues, private collections and the author’s extensive image library to reveal the true grit, grime, and sheer horror stories of Los Angeles from the 1920s to the 1950s. It roams through the back alleys, gin joints, tattoo parlours, gambling dens, nightclubs and the most brutal crime scenes to uncover a city crawling with murder and mayhem.

From Sunset Boulevard to a jazz-saturated Central Avenue, tabloid headlines chronicle the most famous celebrities and infamous crimes in a hopped-up city that provided inspiration for journalists, pulp fiction scribes and filmland script writers in their creation of the noir genre. With rare vintage magazine reprints from the crime tabloids of the time, this is an evocative visual history through which the crime, crooks, crazies, and mean streets of the City of Angels are transformed from myth to reality.

© taschen.com