Backyard oasis2012

"Southern California's pool culture is the subject of this unique and luscious collection of photographs that explore the parallel evolution of an iconic symbol and an artistic genre. 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 people over nature. Simultaneously, the field of photography developed as a transformative method for recording the human condition. This exhibition catalog celebrates the nexus of these two phenomena in a one-of -kind collection that features more than two hundred works by more than forty postwar artists and photographers. It presents works by photographers and...