Both Sides of Sunset

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 LA 1945–1980 focu­sed glo­bal atten­ti­on on the citys artis­tic heri­ta­ge, and this inte­rest has only con­ti­nued to grow.

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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.