Charleston, South Carolina 1978

Over the last few months I’ve been digitising some old slides and negatives from the analog era. The device I’m using is better than the budget examples widely on sale but the results bear no comparison with what can be achieved with professional quality negative scanners. It’s a necessary compromise given the astronomical price of the best equipment. For every interesting discovery there’s a major disappointment when the technical shortcomings of what I had fondly imagined to be a pleasing photograph are ruthlessly exposed. So, with apologies for the technical limitations and general fuzziness of imagery, I plan to post some occasional examples. The first selection come from a visit to Charleston, South Carolina in the summer of 1978, some 41 years ago.

My notes tell me we stayed on the tenth floor of the Francis Marion Hotel - “a twelve-storey dinosaur, overlooking the Cooper River, the bridge, the port and the Yorktown aircraft carrier”. As one of America’s oldest cities, Charleston was well stocked with colonial-era public buildings and residences, of which a few can be seen here. The camera recorded some shopfronts, eccentric on-street commercial signage, a Colonial Revival style Exxon gas station and an Art Deco cinema - much as I might do today. In a small downtown gallery there was an exhibition of photography that included work by Weegee, Berenice Abbott and Moholy-Nagy. My recollection is that they came from the Wagstaff Collection which is now in the Getty Museum. It’s quite possible the black and white photos of Marion Square from the hotel window were taken in imitation of Moholy-Nagy.

While we were there, Bruce Springsteen came to town and delivered one of his three hour marathon shows to promote his recent album, Darkness on the Edge of Town. Not yet 30, he had more than enough energy to race around stage, clowning and screaming, and driving a rather sober audience into a frenzy of appreciation. Much to my delight the second, and final, encore was Quarter to Three, a 1961 US number-one for Gary US Bonds. The bus trip to the Isle of Palms didn’t quite live up to the exotic promise in the name - but the beach was long and sandy with Atlantic rollers driven by a strong onshore wind.

Postcard of the Night No. 13 – Buffalo, Main Street at Night

We stay in the city of Buffalo for a nocturnal visit. Main Street at Night owes as much to the imagination of the artist as it does to the original photographer. Huddled pedestrians scuttle through the traffic as an incandescent streetcar advances through the gloom. An illuminated clock promoting watches beams its message from on high. More modest signs project over the pavement, including a perennial favourite – the sign that advertises “Signs”. In the other cards, the Electric Building lives up to its name with every window ablaze with light while a high-intensity searchlight radiates into the clouds. Finally the Statler Hotel appears in real danger of toppling over into Swan Street - the unremarkable surroundings de-glamourize the image.

Lübeck Signage

Lübeck is a port city with an illustrious past as the capital of the Hanseatic League for over 200 years. Today’s city is about the size of Plymouth, although, unlike Plymouth, the city opted to rebuild and restore its architectural treasures destroyed or damaged in the Second World War. The result is a rich heritage of beautifully restored buildings in streets that offer superb perspectives. Although easy on the eye there is a lingering flavour of a museum piece about much of the city. It’s somehow reassuring to look upward and observe that many of the celebrated Brick Gothic stepped gables are one-dimensional stage sets, held in place by all too visible ties. I always look for shop signs – as a place where a business can assert its individuality – and Lübeck was better supplied than average. The selection displayed here is a mix of the traditional and the generic with an occasional eccentricity.

The Billboard Cliché

Admen love nothing more than the comfort of a cliché. The tried and tested, the familiar and time-honoured bring reassurance to the exhausted imagination. The more inventive may attempt a little subversion to enhance or even undermine the original intentions but for the most part what we get is recycling pure and simple. Chris Mullen has curated more than 10,000 platitudinous examples to delight the eye and intellect at the Visual Primer of Advertising Clichés. Today we look at the billboard cliché – imagine the conversation. We take the product off the shelf and on to the great American Highway. We pass a billboard that displays an oversize ad for our product and we get two ads for the price of one and an amplified message even more difficult to ignore. Whether any research has been done to prove this, I’ve no idea. There is something in the idea of an ad embedded in another – an act of quotation. But it’s very hard to see how that would translate into additional sales.