Pamela Littky Knihy

The nostalgic glamor of the American fairs attracts visitors of all ages, every year in the USA.

Like many apartment buildings in Hollywood, the Villa Bonita was built during the film industry's first heyday - the 1920s. Built for the vast crews that Cecil B. DeMille was hiring during his fertile period, the Villa Bonita has housed great Hollywood figures from Errol Flynn to Francis Ford Coppola. In absence of traditionally scaled, walkable neighbourhoods, Los Angeles has long created community within the confines of these kinds of apartment complexes. In a series of photographs, Littky documents the so-called 'ordinary' people who live their now.

Vacancy is a multifaceted portrait of two towns in the Mojave Desert that are as much rural desert communities as they are states of mind. The towns that both claim the title of "Gateway to Death Valley"—Baker, California, and Beatty, Nevada—are tight-knit communities of people who remain settled where most merely pass through. Independent, hardy, and idiosyncratic, the people of these towns were ideal subjects for Pamela Littky to explore the heart of what seems like a big empty place, but what may reflect something important about the American experience today.