Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Signs of the times

Like Robert Venturi, Denise Scott and Steven Izenour, the three architects who gave it its name, photographer John Margolies was fascinated by the phenomenon of duck architecture. But in truth he was fascinated by all kinds of roadside structures, including signs and billboards, and made it his mission to record these curious, colourful and often ephemeral constructions for posterity.

While some of Margolies' images made it into books, thousands more languished in an archive. Happily, though, that archive has now been bought by the Library of Congress and, even better, copyright restrictions have been scrapped. You can get a taster of his work - and of the twentieth-century American landscape - here.

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