Home Riverside events Seismic Shift: Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal and California Landscape Photography, 1944-1984 Seismic Shift: Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal and California Landscape Photography, 1944-1984 October 1, 2011

FREE ADMISSION FOR BANK OF AMERICA CUSTOMERS ON 10/2!

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Joe Deal and Lewis Baltz crossed paths at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), and the UCR/California Museum of Photography. This was the period when the exhibition New Topographics, which included both photographers, announced the arrival of a radical new aesthetic in landscape. Though that exhibition originated in Rochester, NY, and had an international impact, its origins lay in Southern California and its effect was to shift the epicenter of landscape photography in general from Northern California to the SoCal region. Seismic Shift will illuminate the far-reaching consequences of this revolution in landscape photography by tracing its local and regional history. Beginning with Ansel Adams and Edward Weston—and with the 1946 arrival in San Francisco of Minor White, who would extend the Weston-Adams tradition by transforming it—the exhibition will follow the history of landscape photography in the 1950s and 1960s through the careers of Wynn Bullock, Paul Caponigro and others. It will then explore how the 1970s work of Baltz, Deal and Robert Adams created a shock of recognition, an awakening to mutual ideas, so different from those of their predecessors that a younger generation of Western photographers shared. Portfolios of the period, including one done by a class Baltz taught at UCR, will demonstrate the immediacy that these ideas had.

This event is part of the groundbreaking cultural program, Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. from 1945 to 1980. Starting in October 2011, more than 60 cultural institutions across Southern California will come together to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene and how it became a major force in the art world.

The campaign features unexpected pairings between pop culture icons of today with artists featured within Pacific Standard Time. “Celebrate the Era that Continues to Inspire the World” is the theme of the campaign, which celebrates how Los Angeles art from 1945 – 1980 continues to inspire the world of music, art, film and architecture of today.

Check out a video of Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pop Art movement artist Edward Ruscha: http://bit.ly/PSTvideos

For more information on Pacific Standard Time, visit http://bit.ly/PSTLA