1970年代、Lewis Baltzなどと並んでアメリカの新世代フォトグラファーとして注目を浴びたアメリカ人フォトグラファー、アンソニー・ヘルナンデス（Anthony Hernandez）の作品集。ビバリーヒルズで有名な高級ブランド街「Rodeo Drive」と1984年。経済の衰退期から抜け出そうとする新しいアメリカ社会の移り変わりを、80年代ファッションで身を包む人々やそこで生きる人たちをモデルにリアルな世界を写した自身初のカラー撮影による作品。Hayward Galleryのディレクター Ralph Rugoffによる解説付き。

Rodeo Drive, 1984 is a series of 41 images of shoppers on Beverly Hills’ infamous shopping highway. The subjects appear caught unaware, glancing up as they walk, or daydreaming as they wait to be served in its commercial landscape of shops and restaurants. Anthony Hernandez poses as a dispassionate observer, recording the big hair, wide shoulders and cinched waists of the 1980’s in sunlit photographs. Hernandez does not simply document the urban experience, but reveals in his images the complexity of social spaces, implying economic disparity and racial divide. Layers of socio-economic tension are exposed on a street in an overt symbol of civic success; as Lewis Baltz observes, “these are the victors...enjoying the spoils of their victory on Rodeo Drive”. Working in the 1970s, Hernandez and his contemporaries, who included Lewis Baltz and Terry Wild, were interested in photographing the social landscape of Los Angeles. Hernandez work was included in a landmark exhibition, The Crowded Vacancy, at the Pasadena Art Museum, LA (now the Norton Simon Museum) in 1971, which introduced to the public a new type of American landscape photography – four years prior to New Topographics; both exhibitions inspired an aesthetic movement that continues to resonate today.