Photographed over the course of 2025, The Palm, On Piru turns Ben Brooks' lens on the G-Funk and Gangster Rap artists of Los Angeles' Piru and Blood-affiliated neighbourhoods, across South Central, Compton, Carson and Inglewood. The series traces the history that runs from the rise of the Crips and the Piru Street Boys, through the founding of the Bloods, to the birth of Gangster Rap. It places today's artists within the communities that gave West Coast Hip Hop its sound and that still shape rap music around the world.

Brooks shot the work on infrared film, which pushes reds and pinks to the foreground. The effect is striking: colour becomes both an aesthetic and a symbol, a visual shorthand for the "Red" side of West Coast rap. The result is a study of collective identity, place, spirituality and legacy.

Brooks is a South London photographer known for character-driven portraits of the people behind the contemporary rap scenes in the UK and US. His work has been recognised in the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize (2023) and the BJP Portrait of Britain (2020 and 2021).