Twentysix Gasoline Stations

In this seminal artist's book of 1963, Ruscha presents the reader with a selection of black and white photographs of service stations encountered during a highway journey he made on U.S. Route 66 from Los Angeles to his hometown of Oklahoma City. Evoking the working method of a documentary photographer, Ruscha captured the mundane and unadorned face of American consumer culture. Each of the 26 photographs in the book is captioned with a title and location, collectively representing an alphabet or lexicon of stations, which ends fittingly with a photograph of a FINA service station. There is no additional text. This innovative and groundbreaking publication is today celebrated as an iconic example of editioned artist-produced books.