"Los Angeles breaks my heart every day. It’s the town I grew up in, and like any small town, I'm privileged to still live here, but also trapped. Every day I drive, because that is what we do here, and I notice how much the landscape has changed. Streets lined with one storey local shops are torn down and replaced by three story mixed use buildings that include either a Trader Joe's or a Starbucks. Entire neighborhoods of cozy post-war housing are torn down to make way for bigger, taller, more. The landmarks of my youth are replaced with national chains and mega mansions. Like many photographers, I suffer from the worst case of nostalgia, so I keep driving, and look for the Los Angeles that I knew from my childhood. It's still possible to find, if you know where to look. Some of it remains in Santa Monica, the Valley, and Culver City. It’s not the Los Angeles on the map, it’s the Los Angeles in my memories." - Ashly Stohl, Photographer & Publisher

Ashly Leonard Stohl is a photographer based in Los Angeles and New York, and co-founder and Publisher of Peanut Press, an independent photobook publisher. She earned a BS in Chemistry from UCSB, then returned to Los Angeles to put her science education to use, creating award-winning educational websites for NASA’s Mars Program Office.

Her first monograph, Charth Vader was published in 2015, was met with worldwide press and quickly went viral, with the trade edition selling out in two weeks. From this experience, Ashly co-founded Peanut Press, publishing fine photography books.

On the heels of her successful solo show, Days & Years, at Leica New York Soho, Ashly released her second book of the same name, chronicling her experience as a mother to three children.

In addition to photography, Ashly is an award-winning photo book designer, contest judge and reviewer. She has reviewed at Center Santa Fe, the Palm Springs Photo Festival and Photo Plus in New York. She has lectured and given workshops on her own work at institutions such as Leica Akademie, The Lucie Foundation, The School of Visual Arts, The BYU Art Museum, The Penumbra Foundation, Columbia University, and George Washington University, and SPE National.

If you would like to see more of Stohl' work, please visit: .

www.ashlystohl.com

Instagram: @ashlyleostohl

www.peanutpressbooks.com