From The Art Newspaper Blog:
Before Google Street View, there was Ed Ruscha. In 1966, the Los Angeles artist first drove along the Sunset Strip with a motorised camera mounted to the back of his truck, using it to photograph the entire street in a manner that uncannily predicted today’s online mapping technology. He compiled the images in his book, aptly titled Every Building on the Sunset Strip, then he repeated the effort over at least a dozen rides between 1966 and 2007, documenting the entire length of Sunset Boulevard, from the beach in the Pacific Palisades to the west to downtown Los Angeles in the east. Earlier this week, the Getty announced that it had pulled together 65,000 of Ruscha’s images online in 12 Sunsets: Exploring Ed Ruscha’s Archive, an interactive database that lets you virtually drive along with the artist.