Gas and Glamour: Roadside Architecture in Los Angeles

Car culture and architectural advertising in Los Angeles during America’s golden age of the automobile

Ashok Sinha is a New York-based photographer whose large scale landscape photographs picture uncommon perspectives. His photographs have been exhibited by The Museum of the City of New York, the International Cen- ter of Photography, and The Royal Photographic Society. I love cars and I love Los Angeles for being a city of cars. Over the last decade or so, I have been intrigued by L. A.’s love affair with the automobile, tracing back to a time when cars themselves were objects of beauty. Those cars are no longer on the streets today but the buildings from that era remain. As an architectural photographer, I wanted to capture L. A.’s car-culture-induced optimism and ambition reflected in polychromatic, star-spangled coffee shops, gas stations, and car washes, that once lured the gaze of passing motorists. (Ashok Sinha)