The Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies (LACPS) was first introduced in 1974 as a means to spark creativity and growth in the community through photo based representation. For Southern California photographers, this organization was crucial to the fostering and well-being of a community followed by the creative dialogues that took place with respect to their art practice. Photography was sought as a medium used by artists to explore new ideas, spark creativity, and rekindle communities through an artistic approach. This space is a site for innovative exhibitions that push the boundaries of photographic practice and reclaim a history that has been overlooked.
About Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 – 1980
Curated by Tim B. Wride, Sight Specific: LACPS and the Politics of Community will explore the personalities, programs and impact of the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies (LACPS). The exhibition will be structured with photo-documentation as well as video oral histories that will lead the story of how the organization has contextualized the history of photography in its region. Some of the photographs will discuss the contemporary issues surrounding the photographic practice at the time in which it was created. Others will set the stage for the future of image making within and beyond regional boundaries.
Tim B. Wride is a philanthropist and curator with a wealth of experience in the art of photography. He founded the No Strings Foundation, a non-profit foundation established in 2004 with a mission to provide direct funding to U.S. photographic artists, and is now the William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of Photographs at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida. Prior to his Foundation, Wride brings over 14 years of experience as he was the Curator of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. There, he curated over twenty-five permanent collections and exhibitions, including “Retail Fictions: The Commercial Photography of Ralph Bartholomew” (1997); “Shifting Tides: Cuban Photography after the Revolution” (2001); “Donald Blumberg” (2002); and “Trajectories: The Photographic Work of Robbert Flick” (2004). He also authored the catalogues that accompanied these exhibitions, and contributed the photography component and an anthology essay to the exhibition “Made in California: Art, Image and Identity, 1990-2000” (2000). Some of his other curated works, “To Protect and To Serve: Photography from the LAPD Archives,” (2002) have traveled internationally and received wide acclaim. As an independent curator, he is actively researching and mounting exhibitions with major museums internationally. He is also the founder of The Curatorial Eye, offering lectures, seminars, workshops, and mentoring to photographers, collectors, and not-for-profit institutions.
Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, coming together for six months beginning in October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a major new force in the art world. Each institution will make its own contribution to this grand-scale story of artistic innovation and social change, told through a multitude of simultaneous exhibitions and programs. Exploring and celebrating the significance of the crucial post-World War II years through the tumultuous period of the 1960s and 70s, Pacific Standard Time encompasses developments from modernist architecture and design to multi-media installations; from L.A. Pop to post-minimalism; from the films of the African American L.A. Rebellion to the feminist happenings of the Woman’s Building; from ceramics to Chicano performance art; and from Japanese American design to the pioneering work of artists’ collectives.
Initiated through $10 million in grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time involves cultural institutions of every size and character across Southern California, from Greater Los Angeles to San Diego and Santa Barbara to Palm Springs.
Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.
