Join us tomorrow for Photographer’s Eye: CarScapes by George Brich. The former Valley Times staff photographer will discuss his work exploring the intrigue of automobiles and their placement as objects of art in our environment.
George Brich in the early 1960s. Order #00115383
We were thrilled today to see our own Throttle Queens featured on the front page of the Los Angeles Times for a full blown story on the Valley Times Collection! Reporter Hailey Branson-Potts spent a lot of time with us and came to love these photos just as much as we do and we appreciate her enthusiasm for the collection.
After reading the article, troche take a look at the 11,000 plus photos from the Valley Times that are available on the Los Angeles Public Library website!
During the post-World War II era, the San Fernando Valley came to exemplify the explosion of suburban growth that was taking place on the outskirts of major metropolitan areas throughout the country. The Valley Times newspaper (1946-1970) was there to document it all. The Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) has maintained the photo collection from the Valley Times since 1981 and together with Photo Friends has recently focused on a fundraising campaign to digitize the approximately 45,000 images taken by Valley Times photographers. Now, Los Angeles City Council Member Tom LaBonge has turned his Sherman Oaks Field Office over to the Los Angeles Public Library and Photo Friends for a special Valley Times exhibit, focusing on the newspaper’s images of Sherman Oaks!
Join us on Thursday, December 11, 2014 from 6-8pm for an opening reception featuring the Valley Times, Sherman Oaks, and refreshments provided by Antonio’s Pizzeria, a community institution since 1957.
Council District 4
Sherman Oaks Field Office
13907 Ventura Boulevard
Suite 104
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
Can’t make it to the reception? You can still support LAPL and Photo Friends by dining at Antonio’s Pizzeria, who have generously offered to donate a portion of the profits of any order placed on December 12th & 13th when the customer states they want to support the Valley Times project!
Antonio’s Pizzeria
13619 Ventura Blvd.
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
The women of the San Fernando Valley are the focus of the current exhibition from the Photo Collection in the Central Library’s History & Genealogy Department. Defining Their Indentity – The Changing Roles of Woman in the Post-War Era as Documented by the Valley Times Newspaper features the diversity of women’s lives in the home, the workplace, and the community during the years of suburban growth and social changes from 1946 -1965.
There is also a exhibition catalog available through Amazon and the Library Book Store. Former Los Angeles City Council member, Joy Picus (the first woman to represent the San Fernando Valley on the City Council) wrote the introduction.
Here’s Joy speaking at the opening reception July 15, 2014.
The exhibition is definitely worth a look and will be up until January 3, 2015.
Thanks to fundraising efforts of Photo Friends and a generous grant from the Haynes Foundation, there the Valley Times digitization projects commenced in April 2013. Valley Times archivist Christine Adolph has been hard at work organizing the collection and prepping photos for the scanning lab.
Christine recently earned a Masters of Library and Information from San Jose State University, here and completed an archival internship with the LAPL Photo Collection during the summer of 2012. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts School of Film/Video in 1997 and has worked with image collections for local artist collectives, and the preservation of historic collections for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles Research Library and the Antelope Valley Indian Museum State Historic Park in Lancaster. As a Los Angeles native, who has lived in Sherman Oaks and North Hollywood, and currently lives in Glendale, Christine has a strong interest in the San Fernando Valley community and culture.
Thank you Christine, and keep up the good work!