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Ruscha (Edward) Photographs
2012.M.2
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Title: Edward Ruscha photographs of Los Angeles streets
Date (inclusive): 1974-2010
Number: 2012.M.2
Creator/Collector:
Ruscha, Edward
Physical Description:
35 Linear Feet
Physical Description:
28 boxes
Physical Description:
58 GB
(3,827 files)
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles 90049-1688
Business Number: (310) 440-7390
Fax Number: (310) 440-7780
reference@getty.edu
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: The archive is comprised of Edward
Ruscha's ongoing photographic documentation of Los Angeles thoroughfares. Included are
shoots of three streets made in the 1970s: Santa Monica Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway,
1974; and Melrose Avenue, 1975; and over 40 shoots made since 2007. These shoots represent
more than twenty-five streets including Sepulveda, Pico, Olympic, Wilshire, La Cienega, and
Beverly boulevards.
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Language: Collection material is in
English.
The American artist Edward Joseph Ruscha IV was born in Omaha, Nebraska on December 16,
1937 to Edward Ruscha III, an insurance auditor, and his wife Dorothy Driscoll Ruscha. He
was raised in Oklahoma City where he met his lifelong friends Mason Williams, Joe Goode, and
Jerry McMillan. After graduation from high school he drove to California with Mason Williams
to attend Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts). Robert Irwin and
Emerson Woelffer were among the teachers who would have an especially strong influence on
him.
Ruscha graduated from Chouinard in 1960 and in 1961 made his first trip to Europe,
traveling with his mother and older sister Shelby by car for seven months. The numerous
travel images he took with his Yashika camera that include storefronts, window displays, and
billboards, as well as the perhaps more typical images of people they met on their journey,
thematically and stylistically prefigure the photographs he was soon to take for his early
artist's books such as
Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) and
Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965).
A visit to New York on his way back to California opened Ruscha's eyes to Pop Art, and the
work he subsequently created was included in
New Painting of Common
Objects
, the first exhibition of Pop Art, curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena
Art Museum in 1962. The following year Hopps gave Ruscha his first solo show at Ferus
Gallery. Informed by Pop Art and the distinctive billboard culture of Los Angeles, Ruscha
went on to become a pivitol presence in the West Coast and Conceptual art scenes.
Although much of Ruscha's work is informed by or uses photography as its point of
departure, he sees himself not as a photographer but as someone who uses the medium of
photography as part of his larger artistic practice. His early photographic artist's books,
many of which further distill the quotidian elements of the Los Angeles cityscape - parking
lots, urban streets, and apartment buildings - into serial imagery, have fundamentally
altered the genre of the artist's book through their use of photography and commercial
production methods. Yet in a discussion of his artist's books with Silvia Wolf, Ruscha
noted, "My use of the camera is still a tool to make a picture...At the time I was into
making pictures that happened to be photographs, rather than making 'photographs'
("Nostalgia and New Editions; A Converstion with Ed Ruscha," in
Ed
Ruscha and Photography
, 2004, p. 257).
Known for the drawings and paintings of words and phrases that he began making in the
1960s, as well as for his artist's books, Ruscha is one of the pre-eminent artists of his
generation. He has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. His first international
exhibition was in Cologne at Galerie Rudolf Zwirner in 1968. A few years later he began
showing at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, and his first retrospective was held at the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1982. He is currently represented by Gagosian Gallery (Los
Angeles and New York).
Open for use by qualified researchers. Film negative and positive reels are unavailable due
to conservation concerns.
Contact
Library Reproductions
and Permissions
.
Edward Ruscha Photographs of Los Angeles Streets, 1974-2010, Getty Research Institute,
Research Library, Accession no. 2012.M.2.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2012m2
Promised gift of Ed Ruscha.
Processed by Beth Ann Guynn and Linda Kleiger in 2012. Digital materials processed by Laura
Schroffel in 2017 and 2019. Some filenames were edited for disambiguation. Original
filenames were retained as labels in the viewer.
Duplicate born digital files were not retained in this collection according to the
Library's digital preservation and privacy policies.
The Getty Research Library also holds the Edward Ruscha Photographs of Sunset Boulevard and
Hollywood Boulevard collection, Special Collection accession number 2012.M.1.
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection is comprised of Edward Ruscha's ongoing photographic documentation of Los
Angeles thoroughfares. This material demonstrates Ruscha's interest in producing an almost
comprehensive representation of the city's main streets. Included are shoots of three
streets made in the 1970s: Santa Monica Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway, 1974; and
Melrose Avenue, 1975; and over 40 streets shot since 2007. These later shoots represent more
than twenty-five streets including Sepulveda, Pico, Olympic, Wilshire, La Cienega, and
Beverly Boulevards. Some shoots record groups or "suites" of streets such as the Chinatown,
La Brea, and Silverlake areas.
The shoots from the 1970s are represented primarily by strip negatives and corresponding
[?] contact sheets (approximately 10,500 negatives and circa 100 contact sheets containing
approximately 9,800 frames). Documentation consists primarily of relevant pages photocopied
from the production notebooks found in box 7 of the Getty Research Institute's companion
collection, Edward Ruscha Photographs of Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard,
1965-2000, accession number 2012.R.1.
From 2007 onward Ruscha generally documented a street in two shoots, usually two single
days or two periods of two days or periods of consecutive days. Each shoot is represented by
a negative reel (49 reels total). The two negative reels for each street were then combined
by the Los Angeles film lab FotoKem in a single positive reel (24 reels total).
Documentation for each shoot consists primarily of cue and footage sheets and invoices from
the FotoKem labs.
The collection is arranged chronologically by shoot date.
Streets -- United States -- Los Angeles
Pacific Coast Highway -- Description and travel
Los Angeles (Calif.) -- Description and travel
Sunset Boulevard (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Description and
travel
Santa Monica Boulevard (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Description and
travel
Silver Lake (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Description and travel
Melrose Avenue (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Description and
travel
Wilshire Boulevard (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Description and
travel
La Brea Avenue (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Description and
travel
Compact discs -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Contact sheets -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th
century
Photographic film (photographic materials) -- California -- Los
Angeles -- 21st century
Photographic film (photographic materials) -- California -- Los
Angeles -- 20th century
Black-and-white negatives -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th
century
Ruscha, Edward