Ave Pildas' photographs from his recent book "Star Struck," published by Deadbeat Club Press, were fetured in The New Yorker.
Michael Schulman writes, "In Pildas’s portraits, fame is inverted: the gilded names on the stars lining the Walk of Fame (Judy Garland, Marion Davies) are barely visible, while the anonymous passersby get center stage to flaunt their fabulousness. Halloween revelers, old ladies waiting for the bus, cross-dressers, a girl holding balloons—all get a momentary brush with stardom. Even the mannequin heads in the shop windows seem to have attitude. Traces of faded movie magic—like the grand entrance to an old theatre—rub up against the funky, exhibitionist grit of seventies street life."