Getty Museum

Standard, Amarillo, Texas

Date

1962

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

Rejecting the tradition of the limited-edition, handcrafted artist's book, Ed Ruscha produced sixteen photo books between 1963 and 1978 in large editions on high-speed professional presses. Most feature snapshot-like photographs that he made with his 2 1/4-inch-format Yashica camera and sequenced in straightforward layouts. For Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), the first of these photo books, Ruscha photographed gas stations along Route 66 during road trips between Los Angeles and his hometown of Oklahoma City. Several of the photographs became source material for works of art that he would realize in other media either at the same time or several years, even decades, later. Most notable is Ruscha's sustained interest in the photograph of Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas that he took in 1962. Over the next four decades, he would create several works on canvas or paper that abstracted the original silhouette of the gas station, including the 1963 oil painting, Standard Station, Amarillo Texas now in the collection of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.

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