Since the end of World War II, southern California’s backyard pools—those blue-green oases in an otherwise often arid landscape—have symbolized any number of American ideals: optimism, wealth, consumerism, escape, physical beauty, and the triumph of man over nature. Simultaneously, the field of photography developed as a transformative method for recording the human condition.
Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography celebrates the nexus of these two phenomena in a one-of-a-kind collection that features more than two hundred works by more than forty postwar artists and photographers. Thematically grouped into topics ranging from the rise of celebrity culture, suburbia and dystopia, avant-garde architectural landscape design, and the cult of the body, these images offer a rich study of the cultural connotations of the swimming pool.
Photo by David Hockney
Photo by Jane O’Neal
Photo by Bill Owens
Photo by Lawrence Schiller
Photo by Loretta Ayeroff
Photo by Mel Roberts
Photo by Mel Roberts
Photo by Michael Childers
Photo by Bill Owens
Photo by Herb Ritts
Photo by David Hockney
{ 0 comments… add one now }