Dark City. The Real Los Angeles Noir

Dark City. The Real Los Angeles Noir is a unique visual history revealing that Los Angeles—the so-called “City of Angels”—was also a city shaped by murder, corruption, and dark desires. Rapidly expanding after the First World War and evolving into a modern metropolis, Los Angeles attracted not only dreamers, but also criminal networks, pseudo-religions, organised crime, and political corruption.

This comprehensive TASCHEN edition documents the city’s underworld and darker everyday life from the 1920s through the 1950s. Drawing on images sourced from archives, museums, newspaper photo services, and private collections, it leads readers through backstreets, bars, casinos, tattoo parlours, nightclubs, and some of the most brutal crime scenes in the city’s history. From headline-making cases such as the Black Dahlia murder to smaller-scale police and municipal corruption, the book brings together a wide range of true stories.

Spanning Sunset Boulevard to the jazz-filled streets of Central Avenue, this visual narrative uncovers the real events that fuelled the imaginations of journalists, pulp novelists, and screenwriters. Bound-in facsimile clippings from original crime magazines transform the mythology of Los Angeles Noir from cinematic and literary fiction into documented reality.

More than a photographic album, this is a striking and unsettling portrait of a city that excavates the darker memory of American popular culture. An essential collector’s volume for enthusiasts of film noir, crime history, photography, and cultural anthropology.

Author/Editor: Jim Heimann
Publisher: TASCHEN
Binding: Hardcover
Page Count: 480
Contents: Crime photography, tabloid clippings, ephemera, and facsimile magazine pages
ISBN: 978-3-8365-6076-4

Dimensions: 21 x 28.5 cm
Weight: 2.27 kg

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