The arresting lines and bright facades of Los Angeles’ architectural landscape are captured in these stark black-and-white images from photographer Nicholas Alan Cope. Taken from Whitewash—a monograph due for release by Powerhouse Books early next month—the images look to portray the dramatic contrasts created by the interplay of the city’s understated modernist structures and the bleaching effect of the severe California sunlight.  “My work as a photographer began by focusing on the essential components of Los Angeles architecture and I spent two years working to create a set of parameters for photographing the city,” explains Cope, whose work has featured in Vogue Japan, GOOD magazine and Interview, with commercial clients including Toms shoes, HBO, Virgin Atlantic and Free People. “This is Los Angeles as its most stripped down and raw.” Whitewash comes with a foreword from Californian fashion designer Rick Owens, included here.

I moved to Paris from Los Angeles 10 years ago and haven’t been back since. But this is exactly how I remember it. Bright hot incessant clear light, casting blackety-black shadows from Brutalist blocks that take the history of architecture and silently reduce and contain it like lunar tombs. Or Aztec temples morphed into foam-core cartoons. 

This kind of light makes decisions easier, more black and white. Good vs bad, pure vs impure, aspiration vs collapse. Determined grim optimism vs self indulgent despair. The suggestion of an old Hollywood monolithic black-and-white movie set encourages self invention and self consciousness as you make your way down an imaginary long white staircase. There’s not another living soul on the set and the spotlight is on you, wiping out any flaw or imperfection, hallucinating yourself into who you wanna be... 

Exactly how I remember it... 

Rick Owens, November 2012