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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Thirty Eight: The camera as time machine: linking the past to the present > Discarded signage, Snow-Cap Drive-in, Seligman, Arizona, 2006
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12-JUL-2006

Discarded signage, Snow-Cap Drive-in, Seligman, Arizona, 2006

Generations of debris give Seligman's eccentric Snow-Cap Drive-in much of its character. How long has this sign that once helped sell malts and shakes to Route 66 travelers, been bleaching in the grass? The effect of time on the sign is startling. What once was intended to attract attention now shocks and repels. It almost seems as if the Snow Cap Drive-in itself is lost to the past. Yet it still sells malts and shakes only a few yards away from this rotting sign. We are looking at an image that I made in the present, its subject one that is already lost in the past.

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Phil Douglis19-Jul-2006 23:52
Death is present everywhere in a city that has died. You can't escape its signs. Seligman's stores are decorated with stiffly posed mannequins dressed in vintage clothing. When nighf falls, and the tourists leave and the doors are locked, they own the place. You guessed right. Seligman clings to life in a place of death. That thin edge between life and death apparently sustains the town.
Cecilia Lim19-Jul-2006 15:02
Even the dead, brown, scrawny, grass around the sign emphasizes the idea of death. There appears to be absolutely no reverence for what is "antique" or classic or what was once a greatly useful marketing tool here. It's outlived its purpose and treated like trash. Business is business. Out with the old. Make way for the new, as the young green bushes beyond it suggest. Well, in Seligman, I guess it's just - business!
Phil Douglis17-Jul-2006 21:53
I am delighted that this image has this effect on your imagination, Lorraine. I think the area of dried out grass around the bleached sign is what suggests the "swallowing its surroundings" idea you see here.
Guest 17-Jul-2006 21:29
What a wonderfull image, Phil. This is a very significant image. When you mention that you wonder how long the sign has been bleaching in the grass, my first thought was that it appears that the sign is swallowing its surroundings taking the grass with it. Lorraine
Phil Douglis16-Jul-2006 19:32
Thanks, Tim, for noting the archaic nature of the products themselves. They do indeed add another layer of history to this image. (It has been so long since I've been allowed to have anything like a malt or shake that it went right on by me.) As for those letters -- I think they are painted on plastic lids. Another archaic touch.
Tim May16-Jul-2006 18:50
The words themselves speak to bygone days - I don't hear malts and shakes so much any more - although milkshakes still are around as are malts, but they are harder to find. I'm not sure but the letters seem to me to be printed on plates - also a thing of the past, now we are likely to get styrofoam.
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