Some Los Angeles Apartments

One of Ed Ruscha's groundbreaking mass-produced artist's books, Some Los Angeles Apartments documents the banality and standardization of the urban landscape of his adopted home of Los Angeles. In deadpan style, Ruscha presents an extended sequence of black and white photographs of the city's ubiquitous mid-century dingbat and low-rise apartment block. For Ruscha, the array of variations within a formulaic architectural type reflected the unique culture of postwar Los Angeles, while revealing the dreariness of the modern American lifestyle. Ruscha captions each of the book's 34 photolithographs with the building's street address, which collectively serve as a roadmap of sorts for the city's sprawling residential neighborhoods. There is no additional text.