Form and Landscape: Southern California and the Los Angeles Basin, 1940-90

Hello Everyone:

Today I would like to continue on the subject of Los Angeles' architectural history and share with you some of my notes on a great panel discussion I attended yesterday evening at USC.  This panel discussion was based on an upcoming exhibition at the Huntington Library (http://www.huntington.org) titled, "Form and Landscape: Southern California and Los Angeles Basin, 1940."  This exhibit is part of the Getty Center sponsored (http://www.getty.edu) initiative "Pacific Standard Time Presents...", documenting the rise of artistic production in post World War II Los Angeles.  Last year, this program focused on painting between 1945 and 1980, showcasing the work of Los Angeles based-painters such as Ed Ruscha.  This year, the Getty is sponsoring a more modest initiative chronicling the rise of architecture in Southern California between 1940 and 1990.  As previously stated, Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne rightly pointed out that the period before 1940 is left out.  Therefore, it gives the erroneous impression that nothing of consequence happened until the Second World War.  Furthest thing from the truth.

This online exhibit presented by The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, together with more than a dozen writers, critics, and scholars, chronicles the built environment during this  fifty year period through the camera lens of the photographers employed by the Southern California Edison Electric Company.  The participants of this project combed through more than 70,000 images in the Southern California Edison archive at the Huntington Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Garden.  The project  was organized by USC History and the director of the ICW Professor William and University of Las Vegas History Professor Gregory Hise.  The curators include Deverell and Hise, artist Mark Klett, writers Ruben Martinez and D.J. Waldie, and the Huntington's own photography curator Jennifer A. Watts.  The geographic range of the images extended out beyond the basin, covering the entire region.  The photographs look at the impact of electricity such as the impact of electricity in the form of Household appliances and the landscape.  The photographers, such as also took pictures what happened when things go bad such as power outages.  The archive open to public; the curators divided up the vast holdings according to go themes.  The themes of the exhibit are: noir, domestic, landscape, compelling archives, consumption, fabrication, domesticity, labor, foodscapes, scale, light, noir collisions, streetscapes, technology, text, undocumented, flora.  Each theme is accompanied by 20-30 images with essays.  The presentation yours truly attended last was the second of three public forums staged throughout Los Angeles County.  The first was "Better Living Through Electricity: Los Angeles, 1940-1990;" a third forum is set for Thursday July 11 at the Pasadena Public LIbrary, Central Branch and titled "Laboratory for Modernity, Los Angeles, 1940-1990."

First, a little history to put this exhibition in context.  In the late 1880s, there were several small independent utility companies that worked to bring power to the region.  In 1897, the West Side Lighting Co. and Los Angeles Electric Co. merged to form Edison Electric Co. of Los Angeles, which went on to acquire other local utility companies and later an international conglomerate.  While Edison play an important role in creating and expanding the regional landscape and infrastructure, the photographers the company employed, including  C. Haven Bishop the main photographer for Edison, documented the process, leaving a huge treasure trove of pictures that present commercial, retail, residential interiors, architectural jewels, and images of the vernacular.  The project opens with an essay by Professor William Deverall and  Professor Hise.  Professor Deverall, who moderated the panel made note that the archive is underutilized by researchers yet, strangely, used by researchers in the People's Republic of North Korea (????).  Go figure.  Maybe the North Koreans are trying to learn how to layout an electrical grid or just spying on the United States.  Whatever.  The recently opened Overdrive exhibit at the Getty focuses on just architecture while Form and Landscape focuses on the commonplace using images with high DPI resolution.  The high DPI resolution image allow the viewer to clearly see the images in all of their glory or gory.

Following Professor Deverell's introduction, each of the panelest took turns briefly discussing the themes they took on.  One of the curators, Claudia Bohn-Spector, addressed the them of "Text-Alphabet City"-city as physical object.  In this case, text means signage and how its incorporated into the landscape.  Ms. Bohn-Spector's concept was how people experience the city.  A sense of urban poetry. What does the text do to the picture in a social and political context.  The text introduces real language into the image such as irony and mythology.  The billboards and neon signs acted as beacons of light that call out in the dark, both metaphoric and literal.  They become an evocative story of noir.  One great example was a sign advertisingUtilitarian needs that the city serve in the middle of the frame
Text is everywhere-when it enters the photograph become aware of it.

D.J. Waldie was the next presenter on the subject of noir.  After the assorted technical glitches, including a PC/Mac comedy moment, the author presented Los Angeles as contested landscape-Noir.  Mr. Waldie, who is writing a murder mystery for the exhibition attempted to open a Vimeo version of text but once again modern technology got the best of humanity.  Mr. Waldie's vision of LA is very noir city-flip side of suburban Southern California.  You take the everyday, add the right touches, and it becomes sinister.  The story can be told in a sinister way. Conceptualize Los Angeles in terms of existential dred whether the image is projected image or inherited-Critique of noir-"Here Friendship Dwells."

The next three presenters quickly gave an overview of their part of the exhibit.  Filmmaker Josh Oreck discussed his work on the theme titled "Repeat"- the unchanged view. Mr. Oreck chronicled the coming of electricity and how affected LA street life and faded glory.  USC History Leo Braudy discussed the cultural landscape as layers-Palimpsest.  He cited the example of domestic architecture-something from 1910 next to something from 1960.  The different layers of LA, changing idea of the city.  Finally, Professor Philip Ethington touched the use of signs and
signs and text and their reasonance.  Examining how shadows work-the light of the West Coast with the disintegration of bodies.  Neon light is part of the story-LA was first city to use neon.  It tells a story of a big city.  The point here, in a city of millions how to do justice to the millions of other stories?  The photographs present an intended element-thought they were photographing one thing while the curators saw another.  This was not unlike famed architectural photographer Julius Shulman and his depiction of the physical world, allowing to see the past and meaning, denotative and connotative quality.

In all, this was a highly informative and new way to look at the Southern California, through the power grid.  One thinks of electricity as something that is, like water or air.  Yet through Southern California Edison, electricity formed the region in ways that could only be imaged a century or two ago.