The vibrant visual environment created by food trucks on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is a longtime favorite at Interesting Ideas. These photos of this vernacular art experience are from our third session there, in August 2015. You can also see some glorious details at Food Truck Visions: Art of Street Food, D.C. . See our existing National Mall food truck gallery.
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Short Review: A New American Picture
This is one of those “why didn’t I think of that” books, or more accurately, “I kind of thought of that but never got around to doing it” books. Doug Rickard travels the country via Google Street View and creates a virtual street photography from the massive library of automatically generated images. Rickard gravitates to images of more or less distressed locations that include people, which means he is drawing from a small percentage of available pictures. I’m impressed with the patience this must require. As the book notes, his approach lets him show places he’s never been and would
Continue readingShort Review: David Plowden’s A Handful of Dust: Disappearing America
David Plowden’s photos in A Handful of Dust: Disappearing America are marvelously evocative as always. His introductory text moves them to a dimension beyond ruin porn. Usually when you see pictures of rural decay you respond to that evocativeness and to the formal beauty of the scenes. Plowdwn connects you to the stories behind these mostly Midwestern images in the same way that he’s connected, by talking about what these places (and the people who once populated them) were like when he first photographed them years ago. There really is a narrative behind almost every ruined farmhouse or boarded-up store.
Continue readingThe Art of Street Food
The National Mall, which stretches from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol and features most of the Smithsonian museums, is lined with hot dog wagons and food trucks, at least in better times. When last I saw them many of these trucks were extravaganzas of hand-painted signs promoting colorful snacks and refreshments. I fear photographed images are overtaking the paintings, but that’s life on the roadside, and at least they remain exuberantly colorful. Here are images from this portable, spontaneous art environment, August 2009 and July 2014. Update The last gasp of hand-painted signs on the National Mall food trucks,
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Book Review: Shaved Ice and Wild Buses: Street Art in Suriname
Schaafijs en wilde bussen: Straatkunst in Suriname, by Chandra van Binnendijk , Paul Faber and Tammo Schuringa, KIT Publishers, 160 pages, 2010. ISBN 978-9-4602-2054-8. Dutch, soft cover, 19.50 euros
Continue readingBook Review: South African Township Barbershops and Salons
South African Township Barbershops and Salons, Simon Weller, Mark Batty Publisher, 128 pages, 2011. ISBN 978-1-935613-04-6. Hard cover $27.95 If African Signs, with its minimal text but rich collection of photographs, provides a window to African vernacular culture, South African Township Barbershops & Salons passes through that window to provide something of an inside tour. Simon Weller, a professional photographer, not only document numerous advertising signs but also spent time with the hair cutters and their customers as well as several sign painters. He aims not just to show the art but also the culture in which the art is
Continue readingBook Review: African Signs
African Signs, by Rob Floor, Gert van Zanten andPaul Faber, KIT Publishers, 208 pages, 2010. ISBN 978-9-4602-2080-7. Soft cover $45 Every once in a while those of us who don’t often make it to Africa have an opportunity to glimpse the continent’s extraordinary commercial visual culture. As recently as this summer vibrant examples of hand-painted movie posters from the 1980s and ‘90s were on view at the Chicago Cultural Center, which also mounted a show in 1996 of elaborate decorated coffins from Ghana. Both genres have books devoted to the, African hair salon and barber shop signs, meanwhile, were featured
Continue readingJacksonville Attractions
Jacksonville, Florida, like many southern cities, is a treasure trove of roadside art
Continue readingGreat Gyros Signs
Here are some more masterpieces of prosaic art from around the world.
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