Colored People, 1972

Self published, LA, 1972.

Only edition. A fine copy. Soft covers, minimal wear.

In this first and only edition, Ruscha indirectly addresses the discourse around the term “colored people” by paradoxically depicting no literal persons anywhere. Instead, the first half of the book consists of fifteen offset colour photos of cacti, succulents, palms and other desert vegetation, stripped of context and suspended against a blank background. Each plant is uprooted and groundless, floating in the white expanse of the page. Within this context they have been reduced to an aesthetic category. Much can be read into this prickly publication in terms of (in)visibility, metaphor, alienation, representation, absence, and so on.