Still Lifes, California

Rudy VanderLans has been documenting California’s landscape for years. For his latest monograph, Still Lifes, California, he’s selected more than 100 photographs spanning a decade and thousands of miles of California highways. Along the way he’s captured vignettes that punctuate the beauty and absurdity of the California environment. Empty of people but littered with the traces of human enterprise these often surprising and always beautifully composed images will give readers much to ponder. In the spirit of his ongoing photographic road trip these photos are printed at postcard size, a format and medium perfectly fitted to Vanderlans’s unique approach to photography. “I’m not interested in the editioned gallery print,” states VanderLans. “Offset printing is my medium, and to have these photos printed in book form is my primary ambition.” From Hopland to Hollywood and Modesto to the Mojave, this is California as uncovered by the ever-curious author. Rudy VanderLans lives in Berkeley, CA where he published the infamous Emigre magazine.