At the limits of the city, 2025

Four photographs printed Hahnemühle Photorag Baryta 315 gsm paper, flush-mounted; 26.5 × 46 × 3.5 cm (framed)

These four photographs show David Horvitz standing at the northernmost, southernmost, easternmost, and westernmost points of his hometown, Los Angeles. When installed, the images are arranged on the wall like a compass, with each photograph oriented according to its geographic direction.

This spatial installation transforms the gallery into a kind of conceptual map, inviting viewers to navigate Los Angeles through Horvitz’s poetic and personal lens. Horvitz explores both the physical and conceptual nature of borders in this work, using the act of marking the outer limits of a city defined more by sprawl and fluidity than by fixed edges to highlight how such boundaries are constructed, negotiated, and imagined.

The project began at the southernmost point located in San Pedro, the neighborhood where Horvitz grew up and where his mother still resides. To include San Pedro, formerly home to many Japanese-American fishermen and now the nation’s busiest port, the city stretches into a narrow strip to reach the harbor. Next to this port, occupying the site of a former Japanese village destroyed in the 1940s, is now a federal prison used as a staging ground for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The remaining coordinates are located by the San Fernando Valley (North), the Malibu Mountains (West), and Alhambra (East).

With this work, Horvitz not only conceptually moves the city, but underscores how its borders are constructed, often serving interests far removed from the ones of the people living within them.

Photo by Giorgia Palmisano MBP