The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens , San Marino (LA) is opening a major phtogography exbibition, titled This Side of Paradise: Body and Landscape in L.A. Photographs, which opens on June 14th and extends to September 15th.
From their press release: A sprawling, multi-ethnic city on the edge of a continent, Los Angeles conjures up imagery as seductive and contradictory as the place itself, equal parts glamour and cataclysm, sunshine and noir. For more than 150 years, photographers have been capturing the landscape, people, and sprawling urban forms of Los Angeles, documenting—and mythologizing—this seminal American city.
“This Side of Paradise” examines the relationship between Los Angeles and the art of photography from the mid-19th century to the present, focusing on the emergence of a distinct Los Angeles “style” of visual expression. Comprising approximately 250 images from The Huntington’s photographic collections as well as other important lenders, the exhibit will use landscape and the human body as key themes through which both the city and its photographic self-image have been projected. From L.A.’s beaches, freeways, and sprawling suburban tracts, to the city’s pervasive celebration of physical culture and Hollywood glamour, the imagery encapsulates both the glories and the unfulfilled promises of the great American enterprise.
Over 100 photographers will be represented. Featured photographers include documentarians as well as fine artists, both celebrated and little-known. The work of early figures such as Anne Brigman, William Henry Jackson, Carleton Watkins, and Edward Weston will be seen alongside works of 20th-century commercial practitioners, including Bill Claxton, George Hurrell, Toyo Miyatake, Maynard Parker, and works from the “Dick” Whittington Studios. Photographers of more recent generations include Robert Adams, John Baldessari, Eileen Cowin, Judy Fiskin, Robbert Flick, Lee Friedlander, Karen Halverson, Robert Heinecken, John Humble, Catherine Opie, Ed Ruscha, Allan Sekula, Larry Sultan, Edmund Teske, Gary Winogrand, and Max Yavno, among many others.
posted by Doug Stockdale with Larry Pribble
