ROBERT CUMMING - "Movie Premieres LA - 1970's"

October 26 - November 23, 2013

In the late sixties, Robert Cumming put a couple hundred thousand miles on the odometer, driving across the U.S. The further West the interstates took him, the stranger the landscapes became. Beginning in Los Angeles in 1970, Robert started filling up slide drawers with categories of things peculiar to California and the far west; motor homes, palm trees, wall murals, Las Vegas, buildings in the shape of ships, and events like the Rose Parade, Las Floristas Ball, and of course, anything related to Hollywood. Shot in 35mm color transparency, Robert thought of this unedited shooting as a kind of sifting or sketching. The first of several street premieres was in 1973, Robert took these photographs over the next five years concluding this body of work in the late 70s with two Golden Globes and two Academy Awards Ceremonies. For a while he showed these in slide presentations, but finally put them away in the slide file. In 1976 and 1977, Cumming had been working intensively on the backlot of Universal Studios with the 8 x 10, finishing a large portfolio, Studio Still Lifes, and left LA for Connecticut in 1978. This exhibition at Jancar Gallery is the first showing of this work in print form. Thirty five years later, awakening with a yawn, in a new millennium, in the new medium of digital print.