Photography by Stephen Hilger
May 23 - June 12
Acta International
via Panisperna 83, 00184 Rome, Italy

Curated by Allen Frame

My first time in Los Angeles I rode into town in the back of my parents’ station wagon. It was 1958. Touring the West on a family vacation, we had left Las Vegas at dusk, driven through the desert, and arrived in Beverly Hills late at night with a movie star map, spotting the homes of Doris Day, James Stewart, Jack Benny, and then, Fred Astaire. There he was in person, in his garage, getting into his car with a date, then backing out into the street. He rolled down his window, and hailed my father, who had slowed down to gawk. “Are you lost?” he asked. My father grabbed me and pulled me to the window. “No, we’re not lost, but this is my son. He loves your movies!” Growing up in Missisippi, I was star-struck, enthralled with Hollywood, and much later, captivated by the literature of LA, the noirish novels of James Cain, Horace McCoy, Raymond Chandler, and Nathaniel West that depicted the seedy collapse of the American dream at the Pacific’s edge.