Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler's Imagined City

by Catherine Corman (Introduction), Raymond Chandler, Jonathan Lethem (Preface)

Daylight Raymond Chandler's Imagined City comprises photographs of all those ominous, forbidding Los Angeles locations so hauntingly described by Chandler in his novels. From Malibu Pier to the Hollywood Sign, from Union Station to the Beverly Hills Hotel, from MGM Studios to Musso and Frank's Grill, these locales form the geography of Chandler's imagination, and conjure a world not yet entirely vanished. Clive James wrote of Chandler's fascination with Los Angeles that "when he said that it had as much personality as a paper cup, he was saying what he liked about it." But Chandler was also drawn to the Hopperesque loneliness of the city, to that sense of isolate existences that never merge. In these photographs, Catherine Corman (editor of Joseph Cornell's Dreams ) has given us, as Jonathan Lethem writes in his preface, "a supremely evocative catalogue of haunted places... these streets and buildings we have erected in order to give order to our solitudes."

Genres: Art

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2009

About the author

Catherine Corman's book of photographs, Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler's Imagined City, was exhibited at the 2009 Venice Biennale, and is included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art Library. Her short film Les Non-Dupes screened at the 2012 Berlin Biennale. She is also the editor of Joseph Cornell's Dreams. Her work has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement and Vogue Italia, and on the websites of The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Economist. She was educated at Harvard and Oxford Universities.

Reviews

[Tracy]

I found this both interesting and confusing. The photography -- dark with strange angles, soft focus as if taken in a hurry, and sometimes uncomfortable cropping -- definitely had the noir vibe. What I wasn't 100% sold on was the pairings with Chandler excerpts. Obviously at least some of the locations were invented, but I thought some might be real (e.g. City Hall) -- not being very familiar with LA's historic buildings, I was unclear. A lot of the excerpts barely mentioned the location, so I wasn't sure how they'd been picked to line up with specific photos -- I'm guessing artistic freedom -- and the quotes were more there to give the mood of the scene that happened there. Because the excerpts came from all his books, I wasn't sure how they'd been chosen besides geographic location. I've read three Marlowe novels so some were familiar but others were new to me. I could see this being a fun companion to reading the books, particularly if you've never been to coastal California.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book as a gift and had a hard time actually handing it over in the end. (Luckily, all the photos can be seen on the Catherine Corman's own website).
Each photo is paired up with a quote from a Raymond Chandler story. Together and as a body of work they create an eerie, beguiling and even magical atmosphere, a parallel weird-noir world superimposed on the real landmarks of Chandler's LA.
With strong yet awkward compositions, high-contrast black and white with lots of vignetting the photographs are LA, Chandler and Noir all blended together and then filtered through Corman's aesthetics. It produces a lonely, empty, silent and rather bland work which has to be taken as a whole - on their own the individual photographs aren't anything special. It might not please Chandler fans who already have their own visualation of the LA of Philip Marlowe and it might not please fans of urban photography who want more inspired photographs. Personally, I like it as a book and appreciate the mood it invokes. But I happen to enjoy empty, almost abstracted architechtural photography - I suspect this book may appear to appeal to a wider audience than it delivers for.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Catherine Corman's photographs of L.A. are really sweet. But they become more fascinating - ominous, sinister, mysterious, etc, etc - through the excerpts from Raymond Chandler's crime fiction. I haven't read any Chandler, but this book makes me want to, for the excerpts highlight Chandler's skill at capturing little details, and establishing a very distinct tone and atmosphere in very few words. I feel like several of Corman's shots show much more than what's in the frame, and they make me really want to see what can't quite be seen. But I think that is part of the point, to give us a feeling that something is happening just out of sight - either out of the frame; behind the door or window we're looking at; or that we're at a location where something just went down that we missed, and now the evidence has vanished. Very cool stuff.