Every Building on Sunset Strip

Ed Ruscha produced twenty photographic books between 1963 and 1978, of which Every Building on the Sunset Strip is the most famous. As the title suggests, every building on both sides of Los Angeles’ famous Sunset Strip was photographed and the images were hand pasted into an accordion-like book, unfolding as a single sheet measuring nearly 27 feet in length. Shot sequentially in real time with a motorized Nikon camera mounted on the back of a moving pickup truck, the resulting montage creates an almost cinematic flow documenting the vernacular architecture of Hollywood in 1966.

Ruscha’s interest in mass culture derives from his time at the prestigious Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1956 to 1960 (which became CalArts in 1961). First studying commercial art cartooning, he soon turned to fine art, but continued to borrow source imagery from print advertising and billboard design. His paintings featuring product logos and hard-edged depictions of roadside gas stations were influential in the early days of the Pop Art movement and remain so to this day. Like many artists of the era, Ruscha did not limit himself to a single medium. Instead, he frequently crossed between printmaking, painting, drawing, and photographic books, often expressing his trademark deadpan wit.

This seminal work reflects Ruscha’s fascination with the driving culture of Los Angeles and the city that spawned it. Rather than focusimg on the custom cars that maneuvered the city’s streets, as did his fellow artists Billy Al Bengston and Craig Kauffman, Ruscha was drawn to the experience of the ride itself and the flood of ephemeral street iconography it presented.1. The book’s layout mimics that of the boulevard itself, with buildings facing each other across a white median of blank page as cars appear to drive in opposite directions. Instead of idealizing buildings as individual monuments of special significance, this orientation provides the viewer with an unfolding narrative that documents the act of vehicular movement through the landscape.

1. Neal Benezra and Kerry Brougher, Ed Ruscha [Washington, D.C.: Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, 2000], p. 159.