This aerial shot turns a banal urban landscape into an abstract geometric design. Ruscha captured this empty Los Angeles parking lot for the State Dept of Employment early one Sunday morning in 1967 from a helicopter. From above the parking lot appears to be an abandoned urban space, covered in skid marks and oil stains that mark the traces of human presence. In 1999, Ed Ruscha selected 30 images from his artist book Thirtyfour Parking Lots (1967/1999) and reprinted them as the print portfolio Parking Lot Series (1967/1999) of which this image is one. He said, ‘over the years I began to appreciate print quality and see my photographs as not necessarily reproductions for a book, but as having their own life as silver gelatine prints.’