This Side of Paradise: Body and Landscape in Los Angeles Photographs [Hardcover]

Jennifer A. Watts (Author), Claudia Bohn-Spector (Author), Douglas R. Nickel (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2008

Los Angeles, a sprawling, multi-ethnic city on the edge of a continent, conjures up imagery as seductive and contradictory as the place itself. Equal parts glamour and cataclysm, sunshine and noir, few cities have provoked visual representation as insistently as LA. "This Side of Paradise" explores the synergistic relationship between the city and photography from the mid-nineteenth century to the present through the key themes of landscape and the body. Eschewing the traditional, chronological approach to the subject, this stunning book encompasses the full spectrum of documentary, commercial and artistic imagery, shedding new light on both LA and the photographic practices within it. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this stimulating and wide-ranging survey includes images by Carleton Watkins, Edward Weston, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Garry Winogrand, Ed Ruscha, Dennis Hopper, Herb Ritts, John Baldessari, Catherine Opie and many others.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jennifer A. Watts is Curator of Photographs at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Claudia Bohn-Spector is an independent curator. Douglas R. Nickel is Professor of Art History at Brown University, Rhode Island.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 239 pages
• Publisher: Merrell (June 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1858944341
• ISBN-13: 978-1858944340
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 11.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,579,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seductive sunshine and a bit of noir., July 10, 2010

By 

Robin Benson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: This Side of Paradise: Body and Landscape in Los Angeles Photographs (Hardcover)

Any city that is by the sea and has, on average, three hundred days of sunshine a year is bound to attract photographers to capture its life force and the one hundred and seventy here, I think, do a beautiful job. The book is a catalog to an exhibition held at the Huntingdon Library in 2008 and oddly the Director's Forward by David Zeidberg refers to over two hundred images so more than thirty are not in the book. The largest contributor to the exhibition is the remarkable work of the Whittington Studio (a photo outfit that captured most commercial buildings in LA) with twenty-five photos but unfortunately only eight are in these pages.

The nine photo portfolios: Garden; Dwell; Move; Play; Clash; Dream and two text chapters have an impressive collection of images and whoever did the bulk of work in selecting these did a brilliant job. There are very few here that don't provoke some interest, hardly surprising because of the one hundred and thirteen photographers so many are well known names.

The majority of the photos are black and white and mostly exteriors revealing an historical perspective to LA life. The chapters Dwell and Move have some wonderful photos from past decades. Perhaps the weakest section, least to me, is Dream, I found the nineteen photos just too personal to the photographers.

The book is a beautiful production, almost twelve inches square with a straightforward page design, a tip of my hat to Nicola Bailey and printed with a 175 screen on matt art. Captions are on the same pages as each photo (so none of this constantly turning to back pages nonsense). I can't say I was grabbed by the cover photo, just listed as `Woman in curlers' by Larry Sultan, 2002, can this be funny lady Sandra Bernhard?

I thought 'This side of paradise' captured and delivered LA to me and very comparable to Looking At Los Angeles, which had a similar photo take on the city. Jim Heinemann's Los Angeles, Portrait of a City, has a wonderful selection of photos in a more formal historical survey. I've reviewed and uploaded pages from both books.

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.