Stephen Hilger: In the Alley. Purple Martin Press, 2023. Hardcover leporello, 10 by 7 inches. 66 pages, 22 color reproductions. Edited by Peter Kayafas. Essay by Matthew Specktor. Conversation with Stephen Hilger and James Welling. Design by Julie Fry.
In the Alley, a leporello bound book, expands to forty feet in length so that gallery viewers may walk alongside the work in order to evoke the experience of traveling through the alleys photographed by the artist. Hilger’s panoramic color photographs of serviceways behind private residences in the affluent suburb of Beverly Hills, California depict an anomalous view, exposing the physical and symbolic characteristics of the backsides of these homes. Novelist Matthew Specktor writes, “the alleys are where our lives and their byproducts–our losses, our vulnerabilities, our waste, our defenses, and our secrets–collide, where we are perhaps more honestly depicted than we are with our robust and well-manicured façades. The maps and atlases don’t show them. Only the photographer does...”
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