Century City, 1800 Avenue of the Stars, 1967
Januray 8, 2024
On a Sunday morning in 1967, a young Ed Ruscha boarded a helicopter to photograph parking lots in Los Angeles and the surrounding area. This project was a continuation of his previous photo sequences Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965), and Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966). As the titles suggest, Ruscha photographed these subjects in a documentary fashion, rendering them as typologies. While Ruscha’s previous photographs had utilized roadside views of vernacular architecture, the introduction of an aerial view allowed him to take an even more detached view of urban sprawl, to the point of abstracting his subject.
New York City-based Pop Artists like Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol were key influences in Ruscha's early work, but a crucial distinction was Ruscha's focus on Los Angeles, which was emerging as a different kind of major city, embodying the open spaces and car culture of the American West.
In 1999, Ruscha returned to his original negatives and produced a limited edition portfolio of 30 images from the original series.
