by: Rachel Schauer
Event: John Margolies in conversation with Michael Bierut and Phil Patton
Location: The Urban Center, 07.25.07
Speakers: Michael Bierut — Partner, Pentagram; Phil Patton — Contributing Editor, Wired, Esquire, ID, and writer, The New York Times
Moderator: John Margolies — author, photographer, lecturer on American commercial architecture and design
Organizer: The Architectural League of New York
National Freshwater Hall of Fame, Hayward, Wisconsin.
John Margolies, courtesy Architectural League of New York
Clicking through slides, John Margolies provides a quick glimpse into his story of American roadside architecture — a landscape of wigwam-shaped motels, folk art mini-golf, and statuesque gas pumps that, as he says, almost seem like people. Rattling off names, dates, and locations, his mental map reads like an illustrated autobiography, complete with anecdotes for each stop along his journey. Always captured with brilliant blue skies and free of cars and trash, Margolies’s photographs preserve vivid moments from an American landscape that is quickly disappearing.
Within this vanishing landscape, Margolies’s images carry the burden of a nostalgic pretense. Appealing to consumers’ memories of a time gone by, modern businesses mimic the 1950s aesthetic that invigorates his photographs in their logotypes and interior decoration, bypassing the need for real substance. The true strength of his work, though, lies in the authentic and individualized American spirit it captures, not in a shallow discussion of composition and styling.
The once eccentric and democratic landscape has morphed into one of corporate predictability with decorated sheds replacing the now obsolete ducks. Yet despite this increasing homogenization, one could argue that Americans still long for a personal touch. At least one major coffee shop chain has tried to capitalize on the hand crafted, as one audience member pointed out, with its phony handwritten posters meant to inspire visions of silk-screening rather than digital press.
Amidst half-hearted corporate attempts to appeal to Americans’ sense of individuality, we can look back at roadside architecture today and lament the disappearance of the genuine spirit they convey. But we must also remember that, in its day, this same architecture was considered cheap and tawdry, dismissed as too commercial to be taken seriously. Margolies’s photographs, then, provoke an important question: if architecture in the American landscape is a personification of those who live there, what will the endless stream of big boxes and glass façades say about the state of our spirit to those in the future? One can hope that someone with the same love and vision for the vernacular landscape as Margolies will be there to tell part of the story.
Rachel Schauer is concentrating her studies on architecture and communications at New York University Gallatin School. She also is e-Oculus‘ graphic designer.