A love letter to Los Angeles through the lens of a pastel postmodernism

Turning the spatial flotsam of the Anthropocene, or what architect Rem Koolhaas famously referred to as “junkspace,” into candy-colored dreamscapes, photographer George Byrne depicts the gritty urbanism of Los Angeles in sublime otherworldliness. Arriving a decade ago, the Australian artist was immediately enthralled by the sprawling cityscape, mesmerized by the way the sunlight transformed it into two-dimensional, almost painterly abstractions. In his Post Truth series (2015–20), Byrne reassembles his photos of the urban landscape into striking, ascetic collages of color and geometric fragments, creating postmodernist oases in the metropolis. By masterfully harnessing the malleability of the photographic medium, the photographer situates his work in the space between real and imagined. Byrne’s compositions evoke associations with Miami Beach’s Art Deco, the Memphis Group’s designs, as well as the painting of David Hockney or Ed Ruscha, and at the same time tap into the aesthetics of today’s visual culture played out on Instagram.
This vibrantly illustrated catalog showcases more than 60 images from the series and features text by the design writer Ian Volner, as well as a foreword by Byrne himself.
George Byrne (born 1976) graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 2001, and traveled extensively before settling in Los Angeles in 2010. Today, he is internationally recognized for his large-scale photographs shot with medium-format film. Byrne has exhibited internationally and is currently represented by galleries in Sydney, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, Oslo, Mumbai and Taipei. In 2020, he was named the Minimalist Photographer of the Year.

Edited by Stephanie Emerson. Text by George Byrne, Ian Volner.