Series - FotoSlovo 2026 - Category « Old Process »
Gold Medal
Shot throughout 2025, The Palm, On Piru is a photographic volume documenting G-Funk and Gangster Rap artists across Piru and Blood-affiliated neighbourhoods in South Central Los Angeles, Compton, Carson, and Inglewood, offering a visual study of the communities foundational to West Coast Hip Hop and Southern California’s parallel gang culture. Tracing a lineage from the rise of the Crips and the Piru Street Boys to the formation of the Bloods—and the emergence of Gangster Rap, the book situates contemporary voices within a broader cultural history that continues to shape global rap music. Photographed on Kodak Aerochrome infrared film, originally developed for military surveillance during the Vietnam War era, the work renders the red and pink spectrum as both aesthetic and symbolic language, illuminating themes of collective identity, spirituality, place, and the enduring legacy of the “Red” side of West Coast Hip Hop / Rap.
