Boulevard of broken dreams: Images of the chasm between desire and reality in the picture-imperfect faces and places of Los Angeles

By ALEX GREIG

Singapore-born photographer Nguan has always been interested in cities and the people who inhabit them, which is what drew him to Los Angeles, where dreams, realized and broken, are what the city is based on. 

When he arrived in Los Angeles, the land of movies, glitz and fame where he himself had once tried to 'make it,' Nguan wanted to capture the city and its people in such as way as to express all the hope, despair, beauty and ugliness of the city. 

The photographer told Slate that he has no interest in the beautiful, the scenic or the iconic - his aim is to 'make the familiar seem exotic'. 

For City of Dreams, Nguan trod the streets of LA from Hollywood Boulevard to Skid Row and Santa Monica Pier in order to create a series that 'explores the lengths to which we’ll go to grasp our Hollywood endings.'

Of his time in Hollywood, he says, 'I felt inhibited by having to tell stories that required contrived beginnings and endings, and instead fell in love with a medium where the befores and afters are left entirely to the viewer’s imagination. Each of my photographs is the middle of a story.'

Smoke break: A man who doesn't bear much resemblance to Spiderman apart from his suit takes five minutes off from being a superhero

Flying: A girl sits in a pink and blue fun park ride with one other child among all the empty seats

God's word: A man holding a sign exhorting people to love each other stands at the side of a busy road as traffic passes him by

Marilyn moment: A girl stares at the likeness of Marilyn Monroe, perhaps the biggest Hollywood star - and tragedy - of all time

Past glories: A man sitting in a wheelchair grasps a large trophy with a statuette of a running man attached to the top

The king: An Elvis impersonator in a bedazzled jumpsuit looks incongruous striking a pose on the side of a city street

Dancing on her own: A woman appears to have shed her shoes and clothing beside a large public building as a group of women try to ignore her

Walk of shame: A pair of shoes lies abandoned on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, seemingly shed mid-step by their owner

Fun park: These two amusement park ride-goers look somewhat bored as they grasp their cart and wait for the fun to end

Deep blue: A young girl looks ready to make a splash as she poses at the ocean's edge

Bed of roses: A man makes his bed in the shade among the bouganvillea with a box for a pillow

Big city life: A colorful plane flies through a sky broken by powerlines, seen from the almost-empty parking lot of an apartment building

LA: Tinseltown looks decidedly unglamorous along one of its many long stretches of road lined by fast food restaurants and shops

Above it all: A plane jets into LAX, as viewed from the desolate, fenced, clover-filled yards behind these squat, flat-roofed residential buildings

Palm trees and petrol: Tall trees line the wide lanes in LA, where everyone is a driver but no one knows quite where they'll end up

Desire and reality: Nguan says his work is about the lengths we will go to in order to obtain our own 'Hollywood ending'

Urban excursion: The photographer has no interest in exploring exotic locales in his photography, and prefers to capture moment in everyday life in big cities

Over the rainbow: A colorful arc spreads over a Los Angeles neighborhood street

Candid: Nduang likes the idea that a photograph is without beginning and end: it's right in the middle of the story

Vacant: Even the 'holiday' sign on this washed-out motel looks faded from former glory

Wrapped up: A young girl frowns into the camera on Santa Monica beach where she's wrapped in a towel after swimming in the ocean

Kinky boots: A window display of plastic platformed boots shines in the afternoon sunlight

Seriously: This is not the outfit one expects someone with such a stern expression on his face to be wearing

Coming or going: A large painting of cowboys and horses in a gilt frame sits by an open door

Interaction: Nguan told Slate he looks for 'faces that can bear the weight of the hopes, anxieties, and narratives that I wish to project on their owners'

Portraits of a city: Nguan says he would 'walk in the city with my camera and keep walking, in a state of heightened attentiveness' to capture his LA shots

For sale: Imitations of some of the world's greatest sculpture and the likenesses of religious figures sit beside a parking lot in front of a donut shop and a 7/11

Build it and they will come: The vast metropolis of Los Angeles spreads out beneath the blue sky in front of a sign that explains the city was built where none should ever have thrived