RUSCHA, Ed - Ed Ruscha and Some Los Angeles Apartments

Background informations

"'Some Los Angeles Apartments' (1965) was one of RUSCHA's sixteen slim booklets produced between 1963 and 1978. They all prominently feature snapshot photos and RUSCHA is quoted in the book's essay (interviewed by John Coplans in 1965): 'Above all, the photographs I use are not 'arty' in any sense of the word.' and 'I don't even look at it as photography; they're just images to fill book'.  Considering how casually he dismisses his work it's amazing that these books of snaps have achieved an importance beyond their mundane appearance.

Content

The photo volume 'Ed Ruscha and Some Los Angeles Apartments' is published in conjunction with an exhibition of 'RUSCHA's apartment photos' at the LA Getty Museum during 2013, the year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first booklet: 'Twenty-six gasoline stations' in 1963.Editor Virginia Heckert's illustrated essay examines RUSCHA's work in relation to other location photographers like Carleton WATKINS, Walker EVANS, Robert ADAMS, Lewis BALTZ, Stephen SHORE, Bernd and Hilla BECHER and the New Topographics. Heckert ends her essay with examples of work from photographers who have been influenced by Ed RUSCHA (and obviously other photographers) including Eric Doeringer who, in 2009, re-photographed the locations in Ed RUSCHA's original Apartments to produce an up-to-date version. The thirty-eight photos in the book reveal domestic architecture over a wide area of LA: Malibu to Rosemead to Van Nuys to Long Beach and in keeping with Rusha's casual feel about photography they are mostly taken showing front and side, the sort of shot one would expect to see in real-estate ads though he frequently includes more road than would be necessary in a snap selling property. All of them are a long way from the formal style of images one would expect from the creative photographers I've mentioned. The photos are one to a page with generous margins and to bulk out the book there are twelve blank pages mixed in with the thirty-eight. Printing is with an impressive three hundred screen on a silky matt art (surely making them some of the best printed snapshots ever). The book is an interesting example of Ed RUSCHA's on going influence, the Getty has an exhibition related to one booklet and earlier this year the MIT Press published 'Various Small Books: Referencing Various Small Books by Ed RUSCHA,  which looks at how seventy-three photographers produced their own Ed RUSCHA style books." (© Ruscha Real Estate)

About the American photo artist, Ed RUSCHA

Photo books by and on the work of Ed RUSCHA