Ed Ruscha

I was desperately trying to remember the name of an artist come photographer that I looked at during my A levels and finally saw a poster of his on the underground that sparked my memory. Ed Ruscha's work caught my eye a few years back and it's quite relevant for one of my ideas.

The work I'm particularly interested in of Ruscha's is the work he did on gas stations along Route 66 in America. He photographed all 26 of them and made a book. He was exploring how the road has an iconary status in the US and while this concept hasn't quite reached this country yet, it's getting there with the interest in road trips and the amount of travelling we undertake.

Here is a collection of them from the book he made and my favourite one in a bigger size.


I particularly like the use of black and white, though it would be interesting to see them in colour as well. The image above this is my favourite because of the contrast. How black everything is except the blur of the gas station. It almost has an eerie feel to it.

My idea was to get hold of a polaroid camera (which will have to be from ebay) and then make a series of polaroids of the petrol stations/service stations that I pass on my journey from Leicester to home and simply write on the bottom of them what the name of the place is. The idea of the places are entirely transitional spaces but they hold a certain fascination to me in that they're all different despite having the same purpose. Though when put together it's easy to miss the differences and see a blur of a journey.