This video, produced in collaboration with MoMA’s exhibition ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, brings together art and architectural historians, urbanists, and musicologists to explore Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles archive.

Acquired by the Getty Research Institute in 2012, Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles occupies a unique position as both an artist’s archive and a repository of information on Los Angeles. From the 1960s to today, Ruscha and his team have meticulously photographed every building on LA’s major thoroughfares, showing the urban landscape changing through the decades. Getty has digitized more than 120,000 negatives from this collection of over 750,000 images, revealing new stories about Los Angeles and its history.

00:00 Introduction (narrated by Andrew Perchuk)
00:59 Unseen Histories (based on an essay by Francesca Russello Ammon, Brian D. Goldstein, and Garrett Dash Nelson)
02:35 Songs for Every Address (based on an essay by Josh Kun)
04:11 Automated Vision (based on an essay by Kate Palmer Albers)

Learn more about the Streets of Los Angeles project at Getty: https://www.getty.edu/projects/ed-rus...

Learn more about MoMA's exhibition ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibit...