Edward Ruscha

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, Thirtyfour Parking Lots 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.’