Every building on the Sunset Strip
Panoramic offset lithographic photographic strips documenting every building present on both sides of Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, California in 1966, printed on an accordion- folded strip of paper (leporello) that opens to 27 feet. The photographic strips show buildings, intersections, parked cars, and signs along both sides of the Strip, viewed as if driving down the street. Captions below the photographs include the names of cross streets and house numbers for the buildings, from no. 8101--a Jaguar dealership still in operation, to no. 9156, the well-known Schwab's Pharmacy. By documenting the Sunset Strip objectively using a motorized Nikon mounted on the back of a pick-up truck and driving down the street, using a cheap printing process, providing no text other than factual street names and numbers, and packaging the images inside a plain white cover with simple title in gray, and reflective box with no title at all, Ruscha "created a new genre of art book designed for commercial distributors rather than art galleries. Ruscha's books, which became a staple of Conceptualism, were extremely influential to younger generations of artists;" see the Manhattan Rare Book Company website at http://www.manhattanrarebooks-art.com/ruscha.htm
Print Book, English, 1970
[Privately printed by the artist], [Los Angeles, Calif.], 1970
Pictorial works
1 volume ([26] double leaves) : illustrations ; 19 cm.
1089399386
First edition, second printing; 5000 copies were printed in 1970 from the same plates as the 1966 original, the only difference being that the last leaf is trimmed flush. In the first issue, the last photo was too large to fit the page; to accomodate the full picture, the page had to be extended, and then folded to preserve the flush edge. Ruscha was unhappy with this solution, and for the second printing, he made sure that the last photo was cropped to fit a regular size page, and thus did not need to be folded. See The works of Edward Ruscha (New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1982), page 169
Cover title: The Sunset Strip
Like copies of the first printing, bound in plain white wrappers, with title "The Sunset Strip" printed in silver on front wrapper and spine; in glossy white and silver Mylar slipcase