The purpose of this essay is to reflect on my own artwork and compare the differences and similarities to Edward Ruscha's Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963). I also aim at opening the key differences between our ways of thinking and working with photographs. "I am Interested in what is interesting." (Ed Ruscha, 1971) Various Small Books p6
Edward Ruscha, Twentysix Gasoline Stations
American artist Edward Ruscha published a book called Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) that contained a serie of black and white photos he took while travelling on the Route 66 between Los Angeles and Oklahoma City. I chose this as my research piece because when I first saw his booklet, I thought his photos reminded me of the pictures I had taken while I explored and got lost in the city of Norwich over…show more content… my amusement with the whole project was being able to use them together thinking that they weren't really too similar." Ruscha's use of the word "people" also underlines his consistent refusal to feature humans in his photographs: "People are just incidental. I've avoided having people in the pictures in all my books because they are not the subject. Very distracting. People are very distracting anyway. (Marshall, 2003: 62)
While Ruscha was working on Twentysix Gasoline Stations, he tried to take his photos in a way that there would be no people or cars presented in them. In a similar manner, I don't like photographing or painting people. With painting the reason may be that I simply don't have the skills when it comes to drawing people and human anatomy, but with photographs I feel like the moment is unnatural, staged even unless you take a picture without people noticing. I find myself waiting for people and cars to move out of the way before snapping a photo, sometimes this gives me an opportunity to look for more interesting angles and perspectives as I try to crop them
