Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964–1977

This limited-edition exhibition catalogue was published on the occasion of the 2011–12 exhibition Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964–1977 at the Art Institute of Chicago and includes its original printed slipcase along with Hand Showing Book Cover (1963–2011), a signed, numbered, and matted gelatin silver print by Ed Ruscha depicting a hand holding the artist’s iconic first photographic book Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations. Ruscha’s famous artist’s book reproduces a deadpan sequence of black-and-white shots of gasoline stations along the highway between his parents’ house in Oklahoma City and his home in Los Angeles. As shown in the print, the book’s title is printed in three separate lines on its front cover, forming a now instantly recognizable design.

The exhibition catalogue traces photography’s significance to Conceptual art of the 1960s and ’70s, documenting assemblages, books, canvases, installations, and projections by artists including Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, and Bruce Nauman, as well as Ruscha. Essays by Mark Godfrey, Robin Kelsey, Anne Rorimer, Giuliano Sergio, Joshua Shannon, and Matthew Witkovsky further illuminate the exhibition’s theme.