Ed Ruscha’s colour photograph of a swimming pool, a Los Angeles cliché, is presented as a barren, empty place with just a hint of danger. In this image we peer at the swimming pool from an elevated, side on view as if witnessing a still from a security camera. This photograph was originally taken for the artist book ‘Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass’ 1968, in which colour photographs of residential and municipal pools were preceded by a photograph of a broken glass, suggesting peril amidst paradise. It was reprinted with eight other images in 1997 for the ‘Pool Series’ 1968/1997 portfolio. Ruscha aimed to remove any sense of personal style in documentary photographs such as these, although this ‘styleless’ style has become a recognisable trait of 1960s conceptual art.