Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
ARTIST ROOMS
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/edward-ruscha-1882" aria-label="More by Edward Ruscha" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Edward Ruscha</a>
Sears Roebuck  Co Bellingham  Hamlin North Hollywood
ARTIST ROOMS 
Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2011
aerial view
architecture
banality
car park
cities, towns, villages (non-UK)
classification
countries and continents
desolation
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
garden
garden structures
house
irony
lifestyle and culture
Los Angeles, Hollywood, Bellingham Avenue
photographic
places
public and municipal
residential
road
sequence
shop
society
townscapes / man-made features
universal concepts
urban environment
USA, California
<p>This aerial shot turns an urban landscape into an abstract geometric design. Ruscha captured empty Los Angeles car parks from a helicopter early one Sunday morning in 1967, before any cars had arrived. From above the city appears silent and lifeless. Ruscha brought the images together into an artist’s book, <span>Thirtyfour Parking Lots</span> 1967. In 1999 he returned to the series, presenting the images as a photographic portfolio. He said, ‘over the years I began to appreciate print quality and see my photographs as not necessarily reproductions for a book, but as having their own life as silver gelatin prints.’</p><p><em>Gallery label, July 2019</em></p>
paper print photograph gelatin silver
22 February 2013 – 22 May 2013
2013-05-22
22 February 2013 – 22 May 2013
2013-05-22
2013-02-22
Hatton Gallery (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK)
2013-02-22
ARTIST ROOMS 2013: Ed Ruscha
Loan-out
29 April 2017 – 29 April 2018
2018-04-29
29 April 2017 – 29 April 2018
2018-04-29
2017-04-29
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh, UK)
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/
2017-04-29
ARTIST ROOMS Ed Ruscha
Collection based display
22 July 2019 – 18 July 2021
2021-07-18
22 July 2019 – 18 July 2021
2021-07-18
2019-07-22
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2019-07-22
AR Ed Ruscha
Collection based display
Sears, Roebuck & Co., Bellingham & Hamlin, North Hollywood
unconfirmed, image: 394 × 394 mm
unconfirmed, support: 610 × 610 mm
frame: 565 × 565 × 45mm
<a href="/search?gid=999999788" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">ARTIST ROOMS</a> 
Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2011
<div class="text">
<p>
<i>Sears, Roebuck &amp; Co., Bellingham &amp; Hamlin, North Hollywood</i> is a black and white aerial photograph of a parking lot in North Hollywood, Los Angeles. The angle from which the photograph was taken almost parallels the ground below. Two large structures occupy the lower portion of the photograph and appear almost flat, with their upright walls only just visible. In contrast, the walls of the residential houses dotted along the cul-de-sac in the upper portion of the photograph are visible beneath their overhanging roofs. This area is also populated by trees, parked cars and outbuildings, while the large parking lot in the centre of the image is uncluttered and almost empty. As a result, the straight white lines marking the individual parking bays, and the darker tyre marks and oil stains that occupy almost every space can be apprehended as a carefully crafted pattern that can only be seen from above.</p>
<p>
<i>Sears, Roebuck &amp; Co., Bellingham &amp; Hamlin, North Hollywood</i> was originally produced for Ruscha’s book <i>Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles</i>, published in 1967. The book is forty-eight pages in length and encompasses thirty-one photographs depicting thirty-four parking lots. Ruscha hired a helicopter to fly over downtown Los Angeles for an hour and a half and employed Art Alanis, a commercial photographer, to take the photographs for him while Ruscha pointed out which parking lots to shoot. In the late 1990s Ruscha then chose to print some of the photographs as individual silver gelatin prints. <i>Sears, Roebuck &amp; Co., Bellingham &amp; Hamlin, North Hollywood</i> is one such print.</p>
<p>Art historian Alexandra Schwartz has called <i>Thirtyfour Parking Lots</i> ‘one of the most formally compelling of Ruscha’s books’ (Schwartz 2010, p.132). As Schwartz noted, ‘[t]he resulting images call attention to the compelling visual motifs created by the shapes of the lots (triangles, trapezoids, circles, squares, rectangles, rhomboids) and the orderly formation of their parking spaces’ parallel lines’ (Schwartz 2010, p.132). However, Ruscha himself was not so concerned with the formal qualities of the individual photographs, stating in 1972: ‘Architects write me about the parking lots book because they are interested in seeing parking lot patterns and things like that. But those patterns and their abstract design quality mean nothing to me [...] I’ll tell you what is more interesting: the oil droppings on the ground.’ (Quoted in Schwartz 2010, p.133.) Curator Sylvia Wolf has argued instead that, in this work, ‘Ruscha’s engagement with photography reflects a sociological approach to the urban landscape’, whereby the significance of the images lies in their status as documents of a particular place and time (Wolf 2004, p.144). This way of thinking about the photographs is supported by their titles: <i>Sears, Roebuck &amp; Co., Bellingham &amp; Hamlin, North Hollywood </i>records the exact location of the parking lot, providing factual information that corresponds to the indexical quality of the image.</p>
<p>As an individual print, <i>Sears, Roebuck &amp; Co., Bellingham &amp; Hamlin, North Hollywood </i>can now be seen outside of the context of the <i>Thirtyfour Parking Lots</i> book. Ruscha has explained his decision to reprint his photographs: ‘Originally, I thought that the pictures were a means to an end, a vehicle to make a book. And then along the way there was some gear shifting. Over the years, I began to appreciate the print quality and see my photographs as not necessarily reproductions for a book, but as having their own life as silver gelatin prints.’ (Quoted in Wolf 2004, p.215). This later statement does not necessarily contradict his earlier remarks, but does demonstrate the way in which Ruscha often returns to earlier work. As he says, ‘I have always operated on a kind of waste-retrieval method’ (quoted in Wolf 2004, p.220).</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Sylvia Wolf, <i>Ed Ruscha and Photography</i>, New York 2004.<br/>Margit Rowell, <i>Ed Ruscha: Photographer</i>, Gottingen 2006.<br/>Alexandra Schwartz, <i>Ed Ruscha’s Los Angeles</i>, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2010.</p>
<p>Thomas Flanagan<br/>The University of Edinburgh<br/>November 2014</p>
<p>
<i>The University of Edinburgh is a research partner of ARTIST ROOMS.</i>
</p>
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Summary
2016-03-21T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>This aerial shot turns an urban landscape into an abstract geometric design. Ruscha captured empty Los Angeles car parks from a helicopter early one Sunday morning in 1967, before any cars had arrived. From above the city appears silent and lifeless. Ruscha brought the images together into an artist’s book, <i>Thirtyfour Parking Lots</i> 1967. In 1999 he returned to the series, presenting the images as a photographic portfolio. He said, ‘over the years I began to appreciate print quality and see my photographs as not necessarily reproductions for a book, but as having their own life as silver gelatin prints.’</p>
</div>

Display caption
2019-07-26T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
aerial view architecture banality car park cities, towns, villages (non-UK) classification countries and continents desolation emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities garden garden structures house irony lifestyle and culture Los Angeles, Hollywood, Bellingham Avenue photographic places public and municipal residential road sequence shop society townscapes / man-made features universal concepts urban environment USA, California