StandardVision Displays A Nostalgic Road Trip around Mid-Century Southern California with Ashok Sinha’s “Gas and Glamour”

StandardVision’s most recent artist spotlight features a vivid homage to Mid Century Los Angeles car culture and architectural advertising from New York-based photographer Ashok Sinha’s series Gas and Glamour. An excerpt from the series is currently playing on StandardVision’s large-scale digital facade at the Courtyard Marriott L.A. Live in Downtown Los Angeles.

A visual road trip around Los Angeles, Sinha’s photographs showcase Southern California’s most iconic roadside structures and neon signage in an attempt to reignite the celebratory experience of driving. As an architectural photographer, Sinha “[wants] to connect with that lost design history and to capture LA's car culture-induced optimism and ambition [which is] reflected in polychromatic, star-spangled coffee shops, gas stations, [and] car washes that once lured the gaze of passing motorists. These buildings were similar to advertising billboards—symbols of consumerism that sent a universal messaging to the drivers and beckoned them to come inside.”

Sinha’s photographs serve as a treasured archive of architectural icons which defined the roadside landscape of Southern California. His pieces hope to capture the way these structures often represented the very “social fabric of the communities that they were part of, sometimes [injecting] a hint of humor in the nature of the vernacular architecture itself.”

Ashok Sinha is an architectural and fine art photographer whose large-scale photographs capture a sense of place tied to both natural landscapes and built environments. His photographs have been published by editorial outlets such as The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Interior Design, and exhibited at The Museum of the City of New York, the International Center of Photography, and The Royal Photographic Society. He is also the founder of Cartwheel Initiative, a community-based nonprofit organization that uses photography and art to connect and collaborate with marginalized youth.

Catch Sinha’s works on view at the digital facade at the Courtyard Marriott L.A. Live through June 27th, and purchase a copy of the coffee table book of Gas and Glamour on Ashok Sinha’s website.