A short life of the author
Edward Joseph Ruscha IV (born 16 December 1937), known as Ed Ruscha (pronounced “roo-SHAY”), is an American artist associated with Pop art and conceptual art whose self-published artist’s books, created between 1963 and 1978, are among the most influential works of art of the twentieth century. These small, inexpensive, deadpan photographic publications — Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), Various Small Fires and Milk (1964), Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) — pioneered the use of the book as a primary artistic medium and fundamentally altered the relationship between photography, conceptual art, and the printed page.
Life
Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and moved to Oklahoma City as a child. In 1956 he drove to Los Angeles to study at the Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts), and L.A. has been his base and his subject ever since. The city’s horizontal sprawl, its vernacular architecture (gas stations, apartment buildings, parking lots, swimming pools), its signage, and its car culture became the raw material for both his paintings and his books.
He is primarily known as a painter — his word paintings (“OOF,” “SPAM,” “Hollywood”) are icons of Pop art — but his artist’s books represent a parallel and equally significant achievement that has had an enormous influence on conceptual art, photography, and the photobook tradition.
Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963)
Ruscha’s first and most famous book: 48 pages containing twenty-six black-and-white photographs of gas stations along Route 66 between Los Angeles and Oklahoma City. Each photograph is captioned with the station name and location (“STANDARD, AMARILLO, TEXAS”). That is all.
The book was self-published in an edition of 400 copies (later reprinted). It was deliberately anti-artistic: the photographs are matter-of-fact, the printing is cheap, the design is minimal. The title is a literal description of the contents. Yet the book’s radical proposition — that the serial, deadpan documentation of banal subjects constituted a valid artistic statement — was enormously consequential.
The art world was initially bewildered. The Library of Congress rejected the book as not qualifying as art. But Twentysix Gasoline Stations became one of the foundational works of conceptual art, influencing artists from Dan Graham to Martin Parr to the Bechers, and establishing the self-published artist’s book as a major art form.
The Other Books
Ruscha published sixteen artist’s books between 1963 and 1978:
- Various Small Fires and Milk (1964) — photographs of small fires (a cigarette lighter, a burning match, a lit cigarette, a flare) concluding with a glass of milk. The juxtaposition of the final image disrupts the serial logic
- Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965) — deadpan photographs of nondescript apartment buildings
- Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) — a continuous panoramic photograph of both sides of the Sunset Strip, printed as a fold-out accordion book over twenty-five feet long. A landmark work of documentary photography and book design
- Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles (1967) — aerial photographs of empty parking lots, their oil stains and painted lines becoming abstract compositions
- Royal Road Test (1967, with Mason Williams and Patrick Blackwell) — documents the result of throwing a Royal typewriter from a 1963 Buick Le Sabre at 90 mph and photographing the scattered debris
- Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass (1968) — colour photographs of swimming pools, ending with a non-sequitur
- Real Estate Opportunities (1970) — photographs of vacant lots for sale
Method and Significance
Ruscha’s books share several characteristics: they are photographically deadpan, typologically systematic, conceptually rigorous, and materially modest. They reject every convention of fine-art photography — there is no expressive composition, no dramatic lighting, no decisive moment, no authorial sensibility visible in the image-making. The art lies in the concept — the decision to photograph a category of objects systematically — and in the book as a vehicle for sequential experience.
This approach influenced an enormous range of subsequent art: the New Topographics photography movement (Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore), the Düsseldorf School (Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer), the photobook revival of the 2000s, and the broader conceptual art tradition.
Critical Standing
Ruscha’s artist’s books are now recognised as among the most important artworks of the 1960s. They occupy a pivotal position between Pop art (the embrace of commercial and vernacular subjects), conceptual art (the primacy of idea over object), and photography (the deadpan documentary mode). First editions of the early books are major collectibles, held by every significant museum of contemporary art.
Collecting Ruscha
First editions of Ruscha’s artist’s books are among the most valuable works of postwar book art:
- Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963, first edition of 400): $15,000–$40,000
- Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966): $5,000–$15,000
- Various Small Fires and Milk (1964): $5,000–$12,000
Later printings (second and third editions from the 1960s and 1970s) bring $500–$3,000. Ruscha’s paintings sell for millions at auction.
Bibliography
| Title | Year | Publisher | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Few Palm Trees Ruscha's color photographs of Los Angeles palm trees — isolated against the sky, shot from below, each one a different species or specimen — continue his systematic documentation of the Southern California vernacular landscape while also producing images of unexpected beauty, as the trees' silhouettes become calligraphic marks against the blue California sky. | 1971 | National Excelsior Press | English |
| Colored People Ruscha's most enigmatic artist book presents photographs of cactus and succulent plants that have been tinted in various colors — the 'colored people' of the title being literally colored plants, not human beings — creating a work that plays provocatively with the language of race while delivering something entirely unexpected: hand-tinted botanical photography. | 1972 | National Excelsior Press | English |
| Dutch Details Ruscha's only artist book made outside the United States photographs architectural details in the Netherlands — doorways, windows, rooflines, street furniture — applying his Los Angeles methodology to the dense, historical built environment of Dutch cities and producing a work that implicitly contrasts European urban density with American suburban sprawl. | 1971 | Octopus Foundation | English |
| Every Building on the Sunset Strip Ruscha's most technically ambitious artist book unfolds as a continuous panoramic photograph of every building on both sides of the Sunset Strip — printed on a single accordion-fold sheet over twenty-five feet long — creating a work that is simultaneously a photographic survey, a conceptual artwork, and the most literal-minded map of a famous street ever made. | 1966 | National Excelsior Press | English |
| Real Estate Opportunities Ruscha's photographs of vacant lots for sale across Los Angeles — each captioned with the property's address and the realtor's phone number — transform the language of commercial real estate into a conceptual artwork that is also, fifty years later, a poignant record of the empty spaces that have long since been filled by the city's relentless expansion. | 1970 | National Excelsior Press | English |
| Royal Road Test Ruscha's most playful and enigmatic artist book documents a single act: throwing a Royal typewriter out of a car window at ninety miles per hour on a Nevada highway, then photographing the scattered debris — creating a work that parodies scientific documentation, anticipates performance art, and produces genuinely beautiful photographs of destruction. | 1967 | National Excelsior Press | English |
| Some Los Angeles Apartments Ruscha's third artist book photographs Los Angeles apartment buildings with the same deadpan methodology he applied to gas stations — no commentary, no aestheticization, just the buildings as they are — creating both a vernacular architectural record of mid-century LA and a conceptual artwork that treats the anonymous apartment block as a subject worthy of the same attention as a cathedral. | 1965 | National Excelsior Press | English |
| Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles Ruscha's aerial photographs of thirty-four Los Angeles parking lots — taken from a helicopter, showing the geometric patterns of painted lines, scattered cars, and vast expanses of asphalt — turn the most mundane feature of the American landscape into a series of abstract compositions that are also, inadvertently, a devastating portrait of a city organized around the automobile. | 1967 | National Excelsior Press | English |
| Twentysix Gasoline Stations Ruscha's first artist book — containing twenty-six photographs of gas stations along Route 66 between Los Angeles and Oklahoma City — is one of the most influential artworks of the twentieth century, inventing a new form that demolished the boundary between photography, conceptual art, and the humble paperback book, and creating a template for artist books that has generated thousands of descendants. | 1963 | National Excelsior Press | English |
| Various Small Fires and Milk Ruscha's second artist book follows the formula of Twentysix Gasoline Stations — deadpan photographs of mundane subjects, collected under a literal title — but pushes the concept further into absurdity: fifteen images of small fires (a burning match, a cigarette lighter, a flare) followed by a single photograph of a glass of milk, creating a work that is simultaneously a joke, a formal exercise, and a Duchampian provocation. | 1964 | National Excelsior Press | English |