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Wednesday 23 May 2012
Until 27 May 12
Bill Anderson, Mr and Mrs Alan Ladd at Home, 1950s
palm springs. A photograph of the film star, Alan Ladd, and his frumpily dressed wife by their swimming pool in Palm Springs in the 1950s is one of 140 images chosen by Daniell Cornell, the senior curator of the Palm Springs Art Museum, to explore the complex meanings of the swimming pool in post-war Southern California. Alongside this image by Palm Springs-based photographer Bill Anderson are others by Ed Ruscha, David Hockney, Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand among others, that explore the pool’s sunny, glamorous surface and its dark, dystopian depths. Anderson’s photograph aimed to quell rumours about Ladd’s homosexuality, says Cornell, who maintains that the image says: “He’s not a gay playboy spending time at director George Cukor’s Hollywood home, hanging out with gay boys.” “Initially I thought about all media, but I realised I needed to put some boundaries in place. No one was focusing on photography” in the early days of the Pacific Standard Time initiative in Southern California, he says. Hockney’s love of bathing was fulfilled in Los Angeles. His images of pools have a “dead-pan irony” shared by Ruscha, says Cornell, but Hockney’s photographs recall paintings in the grand manner: “The pools are a reflection of their owners.” In the catalogue, scholars place imagery of the private pool in the context of Cold War rhetoric. “They are a place for the nuclear family to shelter and a vision of the good life American style,” says Cornell. Mixing booze, drugs and a late-night dip can result in a soggy end, however—the backyard oasis turned Bret Easton Ellis-style death trap. Javier Pes Categories: Photography
101 Museum Drive , Palm Springs 92262, USA +1 760 322 4800 www.psmuseum.org
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