Mulholland

For reasons I’m not really sure of, Mulholland triggers feelings of longing in me. I guess it’s to do with the Raymond Chandler mysteries that I read in my youth and that I associate with this winding stretch of road that follows the ridgeline of the Hollywood Hills.

“I fell in love with Mulholland Drive in 1988 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Not with the actual Mulholland, of course, but with a picture of it. There was David Hockney’s exuberant, twenty-foot-long painting, Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio (1980).” With these wonderfully captivating lines photographer Karen Halverson introduces her preface before then elaborating on her move to Los Angeles and her encounter with the real Mulholland Drive.

“For more than a decade before moving to Los Angeles, I made annual trips from New York to photograph the American West … I meandered around a dozen western states, from the mountains of Montana to the deserts of Arizona.” But then she happened upon Mulholland Drive. “No more random wandering, no more long-distance driving in search of je ne sais quoi. Now I had a clear route to follow and follow it I did, in one direction or the other, countless times over the course of two years.” 

For the full review, go here