Photographic explorations of the city of Beverly Hills over several years.
2nd Edition Foreword by Bruce Wagner: “Though Priscilla Mars is from Fresno, she’s in truth a Beverly Hills girl, an entity completely unexpected, even sui generis, for one so young: a dreamgirl voyeur/cartographer of that cinemascopic, shallow, deep-dreaming lighthouse of a tabloidal, glitzily quotidian, mythic place. Unnoticed, I’ve seen her walk its streets like a somnambulist with a camera, aglow like a sea creature – pixie-demon – with what she’s seen or is about to. In prior work, just as Weegee’s phantom photographs of fans in their locust bleachers at movie premieres, her night vision eye ignored the obvious Sturm und Bling, preferring to focus on things found on the sidewalks in front of the mausoleums of Tiffany, Prada, Bottega, Gucci – the detritus of personal notes, itemized bills, parking stubs, Rite-Aid receipts, lottery tickets. In the 90210 catechism, Mars’ enraptured excavations are the ghost palaces, jet-black shrubbery, and empty streets of the city long after dark. One feels the cadaverous breath of the Santa Anas (and Rolls Royce Ghosts) rushing through spectral mansions; as if Lafcadio Hearn is translating the Daily Mail – interpreting – Hearn and his goblins, the goblins being desire, fame, guard houses, money, and the gated communities of Failure and Regret. How did she get that way? And why? How is she attuned to the place that is in my DNA as well? That shall remain a mystery. But one thing is certain: Priscilla Mars is a romantic. She is a necromancer of the city of the bored, the rich, the gawkers, and the dead. The book you hold in your hands is a luxury item. Now, let the images litter the sidewalk of your own dreams..”
