Several years ago, Mark Ruwedel posed to himself the question of how to photograph his adopted home of Los Angeles. There was, of course, a variety of answers to such a sprawling question. Ed Ruscha, and his own photographs of LA in the 1960s, provided one map. Nigel Raab’s epic walk across the basin provided another. But noticing that the words “palms” and “capri” appear in the names of so many LA apartment buildings provided the key to the project at hand. The word ‘palms’ is quintessentially ‘Los Angeles’, both in its connotations of paradise and as a plant that may or may not be present near the buildings that are named for it – “promise vs. reality in the City of Angels” – and ‘Capri’ is as ubiquitous for its appearance in the proper names of apartment buildings, and refers in that function to … an Italian island?

Palms Capri is a two-volume set of limited edition books, each containing twenty photographs of Los Angeles apartment buildings whose names contain one or the other of these two implied features. Beautifully printed in duotone on uncoated art paper, Palms Capri is published in an edition of 150 hand-numbered, individually slipcased copies. A special edition featuring two exhibition quality, gelatin silver photographs printed by the artist, presented in a custom clamshell box, is available here.