On December 22, 2013, Hollywood Park Racetrack closed its doors permanently. Comprising 500 photographs culled from more than 25,000 taken on location, Clubhouse Turn (2013-2016) is the final documentation of the historic landmark before its demolition. It is a portrait of not only the architecture and grounds of Hollywood Park, but of those individuals whose livelihood and identities were dependent upon it: a portrait of a quickly vanishing Los Angeles,
Constructed on a swampy landmass in Inglewood, Hollywood Park Racetrack was envisioned by entertainment moguls. Inglewood welcomed the executives, who had been excluded from other venues due to prejudice. The first turn on a racetrack immediately after the finish line, known as the clubhouse turn, is considered to be the best vantage point to see the finish of the race and is therefore where the privileged sit. Built with the values of a bygone era and the mythologies of the track, Hollywood Park was a place where the privileged and disenfranchised co-mingled; it epitomized the social complexity of a place of fantasy and dreams, winning and losing. Clubhouse Turn strives to produce a pictorial record of the inevitable amalgamation of imagined and actual realities, environment and circumstance. By grouping the images into framed constructions, the work functions like memory—consolidating, diffusing, and reorganizing what has now disappeared.
Edited transcripts and audio recordings accompany the images to enhance our understanding of Hollywood Park Racetrack’s rich history.
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