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 this volume, scholars from disciplines such as urban planning, cultural geography, architecture, art history, and musicology explore the Streets of Los Angeles Archive as a rich repository for analyzing Ruscha’s practice and the city’s visual culture. Using his photographs and new data visualizations, the authors consider what it means to interpret an archive mostly accessible through digital technologies, and they demonstrate how histories of art have been indelibly reshaped since the advent of the information age in the 1960s.
Citation Information
Chicago
Perchuk, Andrew, Emily Pugh, Zanna Gilbert, Tracy Stuber, and Isabel Frampton Wade. Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles: Artist, Image, Archive, City. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2025. https://www.getty.edu/publications/ruscha/.
MLA
Perchuk, Andrew, et al. Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles: Artist, Image, Archive, City. Getty Research Institute, 2025, https://www.getty.edu/publications/ruscha/. Accessed DD Mon. YYYY.
Permanent URL
Revision History
Any revisions or corrections made to this publication after the date of the first edition will be listed here and in the project repository at https://github.com/thegetty/ruscha-pub, where a more detailed version history is available. The revisions branch of the project repository, when present, will show any changes currently under consideration but not yet published here.
July 1, 2025
- First edition
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Copyright
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© 2025 J. Paul Getty Trust
Published by the Getty Research Institute, Los
Angeles
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Lauren Edson and Adriana Romero, Editors
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Greg Albers, Digital Publications Manager
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Stamen, Design and Data Visualizations
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Victoria Gallina, Production
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Karen Ehrmann, Pauline Lopez, and Isabel Frampton Wade, Image and Rights Acquisition
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Erin Cecele Dunigan, Jenny Park, Alex Hallenbeck, and Kate Justement, Digital Assistants
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
- Names: Perchuk, Andrew, editor. | Pugh, Emily, editor. | Gilbert, Zanna, editor. | Getty Research Institute, issuing body.
- Title: 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.
- Description: Los Angeles : Getty Research Institute, [2025] | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “Through analysis of Ed Ruscha’s visionary Streets of Los Angeles Archive, this volume provides new understandings of Ruscha’s artistic practice, the history of L.A., and the innovative role of technology in the archive”— Provided by publisher.
- Identifiers: LCCN 2024032831 (print) | LCCN 2024032832 (ebook) | ISBN 9781606069523 (paperback) | ISBN 9781606069530 (pdf) | ISBN 9781606069547 (epub) | ISBN 9781606069554
- Subjects: LCSH: Ruscha, Edward—Criticism and interpretation. | Street photography—California—Los Angeles. | Architectural photography—California—Los Angeles. | Documentary photography—California—Los Angeles. | Repeat photography—California—Los Angeles. | Photography—Archive applications. | Archives—Processing. | Los Angeles (Calif.)—History—20th century.
- Classification: LCC N6537.R87 E3 2025 (print) | LCC N6537.R87 (ebook) | DDC 779/.9979494—dc23/eng/20250122
- LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024032831
- LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024032832
Photographs of items in the holdings of the Getty Research Institute are courtesy the Research Institute. The following sources have granted additional permission to reproduce illustrations on the cover and as details on the Contents page, section landing pages, and as essay banners.
Front cover: Ed Ruscha, 6200 Hollywood Boulevard, 2004, digital positive from negative. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 2012.M.1. © Ed Ruscha.
Ed Ruscha, Surrealism Soaped and Scrubbed, cover for Artforum 5, no. 1, surrealism special issue (1966). © Ed Ruscha. (See fig. 7.14.)
Ed Ruscha, Expansion of the Old Tires Building, from the Course of Empire series, 2005, acrylic on canvas, 54 × 120 in. New York, Collection of Donald B. Marron. © Ed Ruscha. (See fig. 8.4.)
Cover of Information, ed. Kynaston McShine, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1970). New York, The Museum of Modern Art Library. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. (See fig. 13.3.)
This publication was peer reviewed through a single-masked process in which the reviewers remained anonymous.
Every effort has been made to contact the owners and photographers of illustrations reproduced here whose names do not appear in the captions. Anyone having further information concerning copyright holders is asked to contact Getty Publications so this information can be included in future printings.
This publication was shaped by a digital publication workshop supported by a generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art.
