Marla Hamburg Kennedy

Both Sides of Sunset: Photographing Los Angeles Marla Hamburg Kennedy

Publisher Marketing: Los Angeles is a city of dualities-sunshine and noir, coastline beaches and urban grit, natural beauty and suburban sprawl, the obvious and the hidden. "Both Sides of Sunset: Photographing Los Angeles" reveals these dualities and more, in images captured by master photographers such as Bruce Davidson, Lee Friedlander, Daido Moriyama, Julius Shulman and Garry Winogrand, as well as many younger artists, among them Matthew Brandt, Katy Grannan, Alex Israel, Lise Sarfati and Ed Templeton, just to name a few. Taken together, these individual views by more than 130 artists form a collective vision of a place where myth and reality are often indistinguishable. Spinning off the highly acclaimed "Looking at Los Angeles" (Metropolis Books, 2005), "Both Sides of Sunset" presents an updated and equally unromantic vision of this beloved and scorned metropolis. In the years since the first book was published, the artistic landscape of Los Angeles has flourished and evolved. The extraordinary Getty Museum project "Pacific Standard Time: Art in L. A. 1945-1980" focused global attention on the city's artistic heritage, and this interest has only continued to grow. "Both Sides of Sunset" showcases many of the artists featured in the original book-such as Lewis Baltz, Catherine Opie, Stephen Shore and James Welling-but also incorporates new images that portray a city that is at once unhinged and driven by irrepressible exuberance. Proceeds from the sale of the book will benefit Inner-City Arts-an oasis of learning, achievement and creativity in the heart of Los Angeles' Skid Row that brings arts education to elementary, middle and high school students.

Contributor Bio:  Ruscha, Ed Ed Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1937 and grew up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma from 1941 to 1956. He moved to Los Angeles, California and attended Chouinard Art Institute from 1956 to 1960. His work has been exhibited internationally and is represented in major museums and private collections throughout the world. In 2001, Ruscha was elected to The American Academy of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department of Art. He was chosen by the U. S. Department of State to represent the United States at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Contributor Bio:  Ulin, David David L. Ulin is the author or editor of eight previous books, including "The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time" and the Library of America s "Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology", which won a California Book Award. He is book critic, and former book editor, of the "Los Angeles Times."