The La Brea Matrix
PhotoBook Museum: Group Exhibition
On June 21st 1975 the intersection of Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue entered photographic history. This is where Stephen Shore, considered one of the leading protagonists of the New Colour Movement, took his legendary photograph in front of a Chevron gas station. The resulting image, La Brea, constitutes the conceptual core of this project and installation, which is the first presentation in Ireland by the newly formed PhotoBook Museum based in Cologne.
The Project - Six young photographers from Germany were invited to Los Angeles in 2009-2010 to search for photographic points of reference to this iconic picture. As the goal of the project is not homage, a conscious decision was made to leave the criteria open. The photographers were allowed to focus on any aspect of the image, for example on iconography, form, aesthetics or its reception in history. These photographers are Jens Liebchen (Berlin), Max Regenberg (Colonge), Oliver Sieber (Düsseldorf), Olaf Unverzart (Munich), Robert Voit (Munich) and Janko Woltersmann (Hanover).
The exhibition in the Gallery of Photography Ireland
The La Brea PhotoBook Study - Developed by Markus Schaden, Photobook Studies are a completely new way of approaching the photobook. Presented in a rhizomatic map, materials are arranged graphically to illustrate the artistic, historical and social origins of the photobook. It is intended to show the people, events and developments that influenced the author within the structure of the book itself. In the case of Shore's La Brea image, the Photobook study shows the significance of this image in Shore's work, and its influence on photographic practice and photobooks up to the present.
Exhibition Curator Markus Schaden giving a tour of the exhibition.
Studio La-X by Klaus Weidner:
In 2010 German photographer Klaus Weidner started collecting negatives from the estate of an anonymous photographer at auction. Several thousand photographs have been discovered, all shot between 1956 – 1979 in Los Angeles. Weidner give the pseudonym LA-X to the unknown photographer, whose presence is evident only in shadows cast or reoccurring cars, presumably belonging to the photographer. The systematic approach of documenting streets and intersections apparent in this archive seems in many ways to anticipate the later New Topographics movement in photography.
The style and the high technical quality of these photographs stays stable over a twenty year period but their function and purpose remain enigmatic. It seems they were made as visual evidence for contexts like mapping, surveying and forensics. The systematic approach to documenting streets and intersections apparent in this archive visually references some of the works by Ed Ruscha and the New Topographics Movement, but it also prefigures more contemporary visual phenomena like Satellite imagery and the aesthetics of Google Street View.
This installation for Gallery of Photography Ireland was curated by Markus Schaden and Linn Phyllis Seeger.
Niamh Crawley gives a tour of the exhibition.
The Photobook Museum:
Photobooks are complex things. More than being just books of pictures, they make an artistic statement. The Photobook Museum is a tribute to this central form of expression within photography. The mission of the museum will be to promote the photobook as an independent artistic medium, educating a broad audience about the form, content and function of photobooks.
For more info visit their website here.
Exhibition dates
4th September - 11th October 2015
Gallery information
Opening hours
Open 6 days:
Tuesday - Saturday, 11am - 5pm
Open Mondays by appointment for ongoing education, artists archiving and training.
Closed Sundays
Closed for bank holidays and public holidays
Admission is free
Find us
Gallery of Photography Ireland
Meeting House Square,
Temple Bar,
Dublin D02 X406, Ireland