PREMIERE EXHIBITION:
   Pasadena Museum of California Art, 490 E. Union Street, Pasadena, CA 91101 OCT 9, 2004 - FEB 12, 2005
     

 

Cultivating Pasadena: From Roses to Redevelopment is the first installation in Urban Traces, a series of interactive rephotography exhibitions on Southern California communities. If the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” holds true, then perhaps two pictures of the same place taken decades apart are worth exponentially more, for they offer us insights into a community’s development in a particularly visual way. This interactive installation explores this premise as it performs cross-dissolves between contemporary and archival images, and enriches these comparisons with an array of commentaries by Pasadena residents, experts and aficionados and with additional archival materials. Together these varied perceptions capture the central theme of the Urban Traces series, the distinctive ways that a particular city negotiates and reconciles two conflicting desires —the urge to preserve what is unique about a city’s history or civic identity and the drive to keep pace with the rapidly changing times. This perpetual process of negotiation is the primary subject on display in Cultivating Pasadena: From Roses to Redevelopment.

Produced by The Labyrinth Project at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for Communication with addition support from the Automobile Club of Southern California.

Direction, photography and design: Rosemary Comella
Cinematography and editing: Jay Majer
Research: Karen Voss, Meredith Drake-Reitan, Rosemary Comella
Image development and additional photography: Sirirat Thawilvejakul-Yoom
Programming: Kevin Tanaka
Opening Sequence: Scott Mahoy
Music: Ben Hendricks and Paul Maurer
Sound design: Juri Hwang
Technical assistance: Guillermo Paredes
Additional research: Matt Roth, Morgan P. Yates, Lin Shi and Ioana Uricuru
Additional photography: Robert Buerkle, Jaime Nasser, and Jessica Witkin,

Executive Producer: Marsha Kinder

Special thanks to:
Commentators: Enrique Arevalo, Claire Bogaard, Janet Akosua Edge, Lee Silver, Karen Stokes, Karen Voss and Robert Winter.

Archivists: Carolyn Kozo Cole, Los Angeles Public Library; Carolyn Garner, Arcadia Public Library; Gary Kurutz, California State Library, Sacramento; Dan McLaughlin, Pasadena Public Library; Lian Partlow, Pasadena Museum of History; Dace Taube, Regional History Collection Librarian, Specialized Libraries and Archival Collections, University of Southern California, Susan Kim and G. Piper Carr, Corbis; Hearst Entertainment; and Jennifer Watts, Huntington Library.

Additional support: Josie Acosta, Steve Adcook, Elizabeth Daley, Janine Fron, JoAnn Hanley, Andreas Kratky, Todd Richmond and John Zollinger.