“It may come as a surprise to the uninitiated, but if there is one thing the denizens of Los Angeles—the Angelenos—are totally allergic to, it’s stereotypes and clichés. Well, at least stereotypes about Los Angeles…

“And yet, no other city in the world is more prone to  being packaged, labelled, and stereotyped. And this naturally also includes the art scene…

“I can understand this oversensitivity. The Angeleno is inoculated at an early age against both unambiguousness and ambiguity…

“In Los Angeles everything is a continuum, a soft segue between different kinds of reality… and ultimately, a dissolving of categories, of spaces.” — Lars Nittve

Lars Nittve, “In Limbo: Art and Other Things in Los Angeles around 1960,” in Time & Place: Los Angeles 1957–1968, edited by Nittve and Lena Essling, exh. cat. (Stockholm: Moderna Museet/Göttingen: Steidl, 2008.)

Above image credit: Moderna Museet and Steidl.

Below: Craig Ellwood’s Case Study House #16, Bel Air, 1953. Photographed by Marvin Rand.