Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles: Artist, Image, Archive, City

Edited by Andrew Perchuk, Emily Pugh, and Zanna Gilbert, with Tracy Stuber and Isabel Frampton Wade Through analysis of Ed Ruscha’s visionary Streets of Los Angeles Archive, this volume provides new understandings of his artistic practice, the history of L.A., and the innovative role of technology in the archive. In 1966, Ed Ruscha drove a car rigged with a motorized camera to capture Los Angeles’ most iconic street: Sunset Boulevard. He created a time capsule of its famed facades, beginning a sixty-year-long commitment to documenting the changing urban landscape of postwar Los Angeles. The Streets of Los Angeles project that comprises these photographs is likely the most comprehensive artistic record of any city, with over 900,000 images of major thoroughfares. Ruscha’s photographs constitute an unparalleled visual chronicle of both iconic and everyday sites in L.A., including popular music venues, neighborhood restaurants, and billboards promoting Hollywood’s latest blockbusters. In