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A Siamese cat beneath a clotheslinethree women with linked arms standing on the front lawna man drying his hands on a dish towel in front of the kitchen stove. These scenes are part of Close to Home and the accompanying the Getty Museum exhibition held from October 12, 2004 to January 16, 2005, which celebrate snapshots--"found" photographs by anonymous photographers--that capture everyday life in all of its joy, banality, and mystery. Taken between 1930 and the mid-1960s, these photographs, most of them in black-and-white, create an unpretentious portrait of suburban American life by untrained photographers whose images can be unexpectedly lyrical and moving. Complementing the photographs is an essay by noted Southern California writer D. J. Waldie. The snapshot, Waldie writes, "depending on who's doing the looking, is horrifying, hilarious, pointless, or suffused with yearning." Waldie speculates on the meanings and implications of the snapshots in this book and of snapshots generally, which he sees as expressions of "the hunger of memory."
The renowned artist Ed Ruscha was born in Nebraska, grew up in Oklahoma, and has lived and worked in Southern California since the late 1950s. Beginning in 1956, road trips across the American Southwest furnished a conceptual trove of themes and motifs that he mined throughout his career. The everyday landscapes of the West, especially as experienced from the automobileÑgas stations, billboards, building facades, parking lots, and long stretches of roadwayÑare the primary motifs of his often deadpan and instantly recognizable paintings and works on paper, as well as his influential artist books such as Twentysix Gasoline Stations and All the Buildings on the Sunset Strip. His iconic word i...
California Romantica features the most important, yet rarely seen, residential exemplars of the California Mission and Spanish Colonial styles, by such noted architects as George Washington Smith, Wallace Neff, Richard Requa, Lilian Rice, and Paul R. Williams, among others. From whitewashed stucco walls and cloistered patios to tile roofs and sumptuous gardens, each house shown is a rare masterpiece, splendidly appointed with authentic Monterey furniture, California tile, and Navajo rugs. Among the magnificent seaside estates, canyon villas, and courtyard bungalows shown is Diane Keaton’s former home in Beverly Hills, which she thoughtfully restored with noted designer Stephen Shadley, and for which she has been recognized as a committed preservationist. She brings her cinematic eye, a keen sense of natural drama, and a profound appreciation for the nuances of shadow and light to the elucidation of these buildings, through the selection of specially commissioned photography. Authoritative text by D. J. Waldie lucidly explicates the architecture and provides an intimate tour of a historic and distinctly Californian lifestyle.
"This deluxe volume offers an exclusive look into the classic homes and gardens in the legendary neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles, such as Hancock Park, Windsor Square, Beverly Hills, Pasadena, and Malibu. In a region famed for its lavish homes and celebrity residents, one finds here a panorama of richly detailed architectural styles, from Craftsman, Tudor, and Georgian, to Spanish Colonial and Tuscan Revival examples." "Shown here in rich detail are the estate of the great Hollywood producer and director Cecil B. DeMille in Laughlin Park, the former Danny Kay House in Beverly Hills, the revered Millard House by Frank Lloyd Wright in Pasadena, and wonderful Arts & Crafts masterwork by Green and Green---the Gamble House---also in Pasadena. The works of those and other renowned architects, such as Wallace Neff, Paul Williams, George Washington Smith, and Roland Coate, illustrate the wide range of period-revival styles popular in Southern California during its "Golden Age of Expansion" from 1899 to 1938. Lush, all-new color photographs capture the grandeur of these homes and their exquisite gardens in the present day."--BOOK JACKET.
In an exploration of one of the most visited Real Cities in the world, photojournalist Marissa Roth has captured the heart of the City of Angels in photographs that at once capture its up sides and its down sides. More than just palm trees and sunsets, these black-and-white photos define the Real City, as only an artistic genius can. With lyrical text by the award-winning author D.J. Waldie, this is more than a photo book - it grabs a culture and exposes it to the world. Illustrated in duotone throughout.
Shopping for a home in Los Angeles? It's a sellers' market, where real estate is in high demand and no shortage of money is thrown sellers' way. It's competitive, it's fierce, but it's not always the highest bidder who comes out on top. DEAR SELLER: REAL ESTATE LOVE LETTERS FROM LOS ANGELES features memorable letters by those who attempted to win the hearts of home sellers with their words and stories in order to win the bidding war for the home of their dreams.Each letter paints a portrait of its author -- her or his family, background, and values (economic and personal), as well as future aspirations -- using social capital as well as actual capital in the effort to be selected. Here narrative becomes the currency.DEAR SELLER shares the diverse voices of everyday Angelenos writing from the heart (versus simply their bank accounts), while also offering a colorful look at the interesting architecture of the city -- and a peek at what lies beyond our neighbors' doors.
Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles is the second book by D. J. Waldie, one of the most gifted writers on the American scene. As Patt Morrison notes in her foreword, "The suburb is America's lifeline and its punchline, and Waldie is its bard." Few observers can present the facts of everyday life with the texture and emotion of a symphony, the way Waldie does.
Available Now: World-famous musician Ry Cooder publishes his first collection of stories.
Most of us watch with mild concern the fast disappearing wild spaces or the recurrence of pollution - related crises such as oil spills, toxic blooms in fertilizer-enriched rivers, and the increasing violence in our own country. Joy Williams does much more than watch. With guts and passion, she sounds the alarm over the general disconnection from the natural world that our consumer culture has created. The culling of elephants, electron-probed chimpanzees, and the vanishing wetlands are just some of her subjects. Razor-sharp, controversial, scathingly opinionated, and refreshingly unafraid of conflict, Williams refuses to compromise as she lashes out at the greed of Americans and decries our own turpitude. It is not enough to mourn the passing of the natural world, Ill Nature shouts. Get out of our homes and our cars and our cubicles and do something...now.
Race riots. Labor strikes. Women's battle for the vote. The aftermath of the Great War. The transformative events and harsh realities of the year 1919 still reverberate a century later. Nineteen Nineteen, published to accompany a centennial exhibition of the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, explores the institution and its founding through the lens of this single, tumultuous year. The fully illustrated catalog features works from The Huntington's vast collections of books, manuscripts, photographs, ephemera, and art, many of them never exhibited or published before.