Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles
Making Ed Ruscha’s photo archive publicly accessible for the first time
Project Details
- Categories
- Years 2015 – present
- Status
- Organizer
About
Goal
By digitizing five decades of Ed Ruscha’s photographic project to document the streets of Los Angeles, the Getty Research Institute provides a crucial, publicly available resource to researchers of history, art, and architecture. Through an ongoing research initiative with external scholars, the project also contributes to current discourses in digital art history. It situates Streets of Los Angeles archive within various historical frameworks, highlighting what it can tell us about modern art, architecture, and the changing physical, social, and cultural landscapes of Los Angeles.
Outcomes
- A peer-reviewed digital publication, Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles: City, Archive, Image, Artist, which contextualizes Ruscha’s archive as an extension of his artistic practice and includes sixteen original scholarly essays, data visualizations, and two multimedia artist projects (forthcoming fall 2024)
- 12 Sunsets, an interactive website allowing users to access and explore Ruscha’s digitized shoots of Sunset Boulevard
- The digitization of over 140,000 negatives from the archive
Background
Project Team
Resources
Featured Resources
LA Stories: Urbanism, Music, and AI in Ed Ruscha’s Archive
Video
(opens in new tab)This video brings together multidisciplinary experts to explore Ed Ruscha's Streets of Los Angeles archive
12 Sunsets
Interactive
65,000 digitized photographs present a unique view of Los Angeles’ Sunset Boulevard and how it has changed over the past 50 years
News
- 2024
Tour
Sunset Boulevard Bus Tour with Josh Kun
- 2022
Talk
Imaginaries of LA: Michelle Caswell, Laura Pulido, and Kandis Williams
- 2021
Talk
Imaginaries of LA: Umar Rashid and Sandy Rodriguez
- 2021
Article
The Ed Ruscha Streets of Los Angeles Project (Mediapolis, Mark Shiel)
- 2021
Magazine article
Shading Sunset: Charles Waldheim on reimagining the streets of Los Angeles for a warmer future (Harvard University, Charles Shafaieh)
- 2021
Talk
Imaginaries of LA: Guadalupe Rosales and Pilar Tompkins Rivas
- 2021
Article
10 Songs for 12 Sunsets series by Josh Kun
- 2021
Newspaper article
Ed Ruscha’s stunning Sunset Strip art project lets you tour its full length, east to west — and back in time (Washington Post, Sebastian Smee)
- 2020
Talk
Imaginaries of LA: Edgar Arceneaux and Julian Myers-Szupinska
- 2020
Article
Does It Snow in L.A.?
- 2020
Newspaper article
65,000 photos of Sunset Boulevard: Take the ultimate road trip with Ed Ruscha (Los Angeles Times, Deborah Vankin)
- 2020
Podcast
Getty Art + Ideas: Reflections: Zanna Gilbert on Ed Ruscha
- 2011
Press Release
The Getty Acquires Ed Ruscha Photographs and Archive