• Original 2011 Janette Beckman El Hoyo Maravilla photobook, Dashwood Books, New York. Front cover showing near-blank white wrapper with small inset black-and-white photograph of a young man in a white t-shirt standing before a graffiti-covered wall, hands raised.
  • Reverse of 2011 Janette Beckman El Hoyo Maravilla, Dashwood Books. Back cover showing near-blank white wrapper with small inset black-and-white photograph of a chopper motorcycle parked on a suburban street with a Kool cigarettes billboard visible behind.
  • Interior spread showing black-bordered portrait of a young man in a white t-shirt standing before a graffiti wall reading SERGIO DANNY, hands raised with fingers spread.
  • Interior spread showing black-bordered portrait of a young man in a white t-shirt standing before a graffiti wall reading SERGIO DANNY, hands raised with fingers spread.
  • Interior spread showing black-bordered portrait of a young woman crouching against a graffiti-covered cinder block wall, wearing a white tank top and dark jeans.
  • (portrait — man, motorcycle): Interior spread showing black-bordered portrait of a man in a sleeveless vest and headband seated on a chopper motorcycle in a backyard with a punching bag hanging behind him.
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Dashwood Books

JANETTE BECKMAN — El Hoyo Maravilla, Dashwood Books, New York, 2011

JANETTE BECKMAN — El Hoyo Maravilla, Dashwood Books, New York, 2011

£150.00 GBP
£150.00 GBP
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Saddle-stapled softcover. 18 × 24 cm. 30 pages. Black-and-white offset printing. First edition of 500 copies. Published by Dashwood Books, New York, 2011.

A compact photographic record of East Los Angeles made during the summer of 1983. While visiting California to photograph the West Coast punk scene, Beckman encountered an unillustrated LA Weekly article about El Hoyo Maravilla, a Mexican American street gang centred around Maravilla Park. After contacting the writer, she was introduced to the neighbourhood and returned repeatedly with her Hasselblad camera.

The resulting portraits show gang members, friends, girlfriends, motorcycles, graffiti and domestic surroundings without reducing the community to crime reportage. Subjects meet the camera directly and largely determine their own poses. Beckman has described the photographs as collaborations grounded in communication and respect, an approach already established through her earlier portraits of British punks, mods, skinheads and the emerging New York hip-hop scene.

The photographs were not accepted for publication when first made. They remained in Beckman’s archive until Dashwood Books issued this small monograph in 2011 — nearly three decades later. Its publication also reopened contact between the photographer and several people pictured in the series, converting a previously dormant body of work into a shared record with a continuing social life.

The book is notably restrained in construction. Near-blank white covers carry small inset photographs; inside, the portraits appear with deep black borders and minimal interruption. The format sits between documentary photo essay, independently produced zine and recovered community archive. The sequence gives equal weight to clothing, posture, machinery, walls and bodies: identity recorded through the surfaces by which it was publicly maintained.

This is the original 2011 Dashwood edition, saddle-stapled and limited to 500 copies. A redesigned edition followed in 2020 with additional previously unpublished photographs, making the earlier version a materially distinct first presentation of the project. The original edition is now out of print.

Condition: appears very good from the supplied photographs, with clean pages and only light handling and surface wear consistent with age.

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