New Orleans-based photographer Stephen Hilger’s solo exhibition entitled Hotel California will open to the public on January 4, with a reception for the artist on January 11 at MUSE Center for Photography and the Moving Image in New York. Hotel California and the adjoining blog and Ambassador Archive project (in collaboration with Annie Shaw) charts the evolution of one of Los Angeles’ most eminent structures and its subsequent history: The Ambassador Hotel. 

MUSE Center for Photography and the Moving Image is located at 580 Eighth Avenue at 38th Street on the 7th floor. Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12-6pm.

Images: Wilshire, Stephen Hilger; Carnival (The Ambassador Hotel), Stephen Hilger; The Ambassador Hotel, 1938, Western Publicity and Novelty Co., via Ambassador Archive

Visiting professor of photography at Tulane, Stephen Hilger, is giving at artist talk on Wednesday, March 2 at 4:30pm in the Stone Auditorium of the Woldenberg Art Center at Tulane. 

Images: Citizen; Cat’s Claw from the Back of Town series. Last Pictures; Tear-down from The Hotel is History series. 

New Orleans photographer Stephen Hilger has currently been working on two bodies of work. One series entitled Back of Town chronicles the doomed New Orleans neighborhood of Lower Mid-City. According to Hilger, he was initially “drawn to the area by the shutdown and abandoned Charity Hospital…and soon learned about the official plans to raze more than 200 homes and other buildings in order to build two new hospitals…