When Dutch photographer Dana Lixenberg first started her series Imperial Courts in 1993, on the Watts housing estate of the same name, the area was on edge after the Rodney King riots the previous year and the retrial of the officers in the King case was in full swing. “The media focused on the Bloods and Crips [gangs], and would come in a van, shoot an item, and leave,” she says. “I felt photography was a way to step into the real scenario. I worked with a large-format camera on a tripod, slowing down the process, and focused on details and body language.”

This was a radical and necessary approach for an area that, on film, was seen by the rest of America through a frantic helicopter camera. “I don’t want to use a person to illustrate a story,” she continues. “I want each image to be its own self-contained story, and then together, as a body, they present the community in a certain way. It’s not the wild west with people shooting each other, but people do live with a lot of loss and death.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest J 50, 2008 Photograph: Dana Lixenberg

To get access, she was introduced to Tony Bogard, a Crips leader who had recently brokered a peace deal between the warring gangs. Initially reluctant, he liked a test shot, and introduced Dana to a local man, Andre, to use as her assistant: “He figured at least Andre would get some money out of this.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chin with his daughter Dee Dee, 1993 Photograph: Dana Lixenberg

Her earnestly beautiful portraits were exhibited in the Netherlands and published in Vibe, cementing her international career; the magazine commissioned further portraits of 2Pac, Notorious BIG and others. Then from 2008 to 2015, she returned to Imperial Courts every year to add to the series – which has now been nominated for this year’s Deutsche Börse photography prize – and found a place still struggling to break a cycle of poverty and crime.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Felia, Diamond and Sheena, 2015 Photograph: Dana Lixenberg

“Kids talk so casually about prison – not because they’re posturing and being cool, it’s just part of their lives,” she says. “The majority of the guys I met in the photographs go in and out of jail. The conditions in Imperial Courts have stayed very much the same; schools are still crap. If you don’t have any guidance or foundation in terms of education, to go on job interviews, learn a trade, it’s understandable that you’d want to make a shortcut.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest China, 1993 … one of the sitters who has since died. Photograph: Dana Lixenberg

Various sitters for the 1993 series have been killed: the vivacious China, hanging off a children’s slide; Spider, smoking a cigarette in a shower cap; and her fixer, Bogard himself.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Spider, 1993. Photograph: Dana Lixenberg

The community were initially wary of this white Dutch woman: “They asked: are you with the FBI? I had to say: do I look like an FBI agent?” But they now love Lixenberg’s images – “Over the years I’ve become part of the furniture, the picture lady!” – because they can see she’s tried to picture them as people rather than archetypes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Big Shaan, 1993 Photograph: Dana Lixenberg

'The cat in the coffin almost steals the show' … the Deutsche Börse photography prize Read more

“I’m always wary of doing something too obvious when illustrating a person, like photographing a writer at his desk,” Lixenberg says. “When I start shooting I try to focus on the person and clear my head of the rest, no matter how famous they are. And in Imperial Courts, I’m just tuning into the person in front of me.”