25th CODH Seminar - Historical Photographs and Urban Scape

We invite Emily Pugh from the Getty Research Institute to introduce Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles, an unparalleled visual chronicle of both iconic and everyday sites in the city. Two other speakers will also introduce related research activities in Japan (Kyoto) and other areas to share the status and prospects in this field.

Basic Information

This is a hybrid event.

Date	13:00-14:30 JST, December 17 (Wed), 2025
Venue	Onsite: Room 1208, National Institute of Informatics (Access) Online: Zoom
Registration	Free Registration in advance is required
Language	English Translation to Japanese is not available.
Support	The DH Consortium Project of Japan (DiHuCo): Data Application Hub for the Maps and Gazetteers Domains

Invited Talk

Title

City as Image: Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles

In 1965, Ed Ruscha began driving up and down major boulevards of Los Angeles, photographing the facades of the buildings that lined the streets, as part of a project that continues to this day. In 2011, the Getty Research Institute acquired a portion of the resulting archive, comprising of around 900,000 negatives. Ruscha's photographs constitute an unparalleled visual chronicle of both iconic and everyday sites in the city, prompting the question: what is the role of visual data in understanding urban space?

Speaker

Emily Pugh (Getty Research Institute)

Emily Pugh is a Principal Research Specialist at the Getty Research Institute, specializing in architectural history and critical cultural heritage studies. Her publications include the 2014 book Architecture, Politics, and Identity in Divided Berlin, essays for the journal photographies and Debates in the Digital Humanities (2023), and the co-edited book Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles: Artist, Image, Archive, City (2025). Her work has been supported by the Center for Architecture Theory Criticism History at the University of Queensland and by the Humboldt University in Berlin where she served as the 2022–23 Rudolf Arnheim Visiting Professor.

Program

13:00-13:40	City as Image: Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles	Emily Pugh Getty Research Institute
13:40-13:55	Past urban landscapes overlaying the map	Keiji Yano Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University
13:55-14:10	Reconstructing the Cityscape of the Past Using Synchronic and Diachronic Photographs	Asanobu Kitamoto ROIS-DS Center for Open Data in the Humanities (CODH) / National Institute of Informatics
14:10-14:30	Discussion	All

Registration

You are all invited, free of charge.
Registration in advance is required using the following form.
December 16: The deadline for registration.
Onsite participants are limited to 20 people.
Online Zoom link will be sent by email in the morning of December 17.

Past CODH Seminars