Exhibition dates: 18th January – 2nd April, 2021
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1975
1975
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Fallen Angels
Love these.
Krueger’s street photography inverts the normal meaning of bathos… in that a silly or very ordinary subject suddenly changes to a beautiful or important one.
For no reason that we can see, a clown stands in sunlight next to a tree on a street in Los Angeles. What is he doing there? How did he get there? The incongruity of the scene takes on an importance and pathos that is hard to decipher. A pair of 76’s; a snarling dog in a Mustang; the legs of a man on a contraption doing god knows what; and a “majorette” captured mid-air: was she pushed, did she trip, will she fall or recover from this impossible angle, this suspended aerobatic display silently watched by the camera lens and two parked School Buses.
There is black humour aplenty in these photographs, as they picture the idiotic underbelly and anachronisms of a major American city. They make me think, they make me laugh in that small, tight way when you are not sure you should be laughing at all. The banana on roller skates, the hairy jacket and the man covered in Band Aids, his head wrapped in bandages. What the hell!
Remember what was happening in 1971-80 in Los Angeles. A 6.6-magnitude earthquake centred in Sylmar causes 65 deaths and $505 million in damage; an oil tanker explodes in Los Angeles Harbor killing five people and injuring 50; Los Angeles passes its gay and lesbian civil rights bill; Eula Love, a 39-year-old African-American mother was shot and killed on January 3, 1979 by Los Angeles Police Department (nothing changes!); the Skid Row Stabber (who has never been found) kills 11 homeless people; Los Angeles experiences severe flooding and mudslides; and in 1981 the first case of AIDS appears in Los Angeles County. The man with the Band AIDS seems rather prescient now.
“Through the 20th century, immigrants were attracted by a promised paradise: endless orange groves, a temperate climate and money to be made, as described by aggressively promoted booster campaigns. Families were told to leave the cold, increasingly crowded cities of the east and midwest far behind – the City of Angels was portrayed as a heaven on Earth.” While Neil Simon once described Los Angeles as “like paradise with a lobotomy,” Krueger’s bizarre photographs depict ‘the City of Angels’ as everything and anything but, a utopian paradise.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Joseph Bellows Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs and the text (reproduced with permission) in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“It’s not what I put into a photo;
it’s what I take out of a photo.”
Gary Krueger
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1976
1976
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1973
1973
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1973
1973
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Hollywood, 1971
1971
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1971
1971
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1973
1973
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1974
1974
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Joseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to present Gary Krueger’s City of Angels, 1971-1980, a collection of sometimes frenetic and often bizarre photographs of Los Angeles, California. Krueger’s curiosity and instincts helped to create a remarkable body of street photography that he describes as “split-second juxtapositions in life.” After graduating High School in 1963, Gary Krueger (1945- ) drove his 1954 Ford west from Cleveland, Ohio, to study graphic design and photography at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1964 to 1967. Later Cal Arts, Chouinard was a professional art school founded in 1921 by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard. In 1961, Walt and Roy Disney guided the merger of Chouinard and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music to establish the California Institute of the Arts. Notable alumni include Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Joe Goode, and Allen Ruppersberg, with whom Krueger collaborated on Ruppersberg’s narrative photo works, including 23 Pieces (1969) and 24 Pieces (1970). Upon graduation from Chouinard, Krueger was hired by WED, Disney’s “Imagineering” Division to photograph the Park and its events. He eventually left WED to pursue a successful career as a commercial and editorial photographer.
“Gary Krueger’s plain ol’ photographs (unless I’m missing a point) – small, tough, and sharp – are good, granite reportage. Baldessari’s “Fables” and Krueger’s no-nonsense photos cut like a hot ripsaw through the cool, marshmallow quality of both exhibitions.” – Peter Plagens, from a 1973 ARTFORUM review of the exhibition, Southern California: Attitudes 1972, at the Pasadena Art Museum.
Krueger’s work is represented in The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
Press release from the Joseph Bellows Gallery [Online] Cited 28/02/2021
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1972
1972
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1970
1970
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1974
1974
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1971
1971
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1971
1971
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Hollywood, CA, 1971
1971
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1973
1973
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1976
1976
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1979
1979
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles Zoo, 1971
1971
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1980
1980
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Hollywood, 1971
1971
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1980
1980
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles, 1975
1975
8 x 10 inches
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed, titled and dated in pencil on verso
Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girrard Avenue
La Jolla, California
Phone: 858 456 5620
Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm and by appointment
Joseph Bellows Gallery website
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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