Mystery LACMA Billboard

Actually, not such a mystery: It's a part of the museum's Re-SITE-ing the West: Contemporary Photographs from the Permanent Collection, which accompanies its The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890–1950. Exhibits run now through June 3rd.

The above shot, located on the billboard above Johnie's (at Wilshire and Fairfax, across the street from LACMA West -- the museum building formerly known as the May Co.), was taken by Mark Ruwedel in 1999. "Deep Creek #2," it's part of the series Westward the Course of Empire.

About the exhibit, from the LACMA website:

This exhibition, which includes approximately thirty works by artists such as Lewis Baltz, Hank Wessel, and Mark Ruwedel, continues the dialogue about -- and affirms the enduring mystique of -- the place we call the West. By the 1970s, when most of the photographs on view were made, America's postwar optimism had faded. Anxiety about potential nuclear annihilation grew as the cold war raged. With its weapons laboratories and test sites, the West was implicated in this new chapter of human history.