Notice how the addition of cardboard and paint subtly alters the visual impact of this pedestrian overcrossing? In the first photo we see little more than the general outline of bars and fencing illuminated by streetlight, whereas in the second photo the once impartial infrastructure is transformed into a bold political statement, unmistakeable in its sentiment and intent.
The sign measures about eight by eight feet and I made it out of a car parts box I found behind an auto body shop. Because the lettering was so large and the character count so small, tracing and painting didn't take much more than ten or fifteen minutes. Posting was a snap: large enough to stand on its own it didn't require any suspension, so three bungee cords radiating from a hole in the middle to the edges was all it took to hold it securely to the fence. Took less than a minute.
When I saw it from the freeway I started laughing out loud. The size, clarity and sheer audacity of the words, hovering indisputably the way they were over the freeway seemed hilarious somehow...
God I love this job.
1 comment:
Big REM fan myself. Their version of Leonard Cohen's "First We Take Manhattan" is practically the Freewayblogging theme song.
As for sign duration, there's always going to be a randomness factor at work. Sometimes the most discreetly placed signs will disappear long before they should and sometimes gigantic in-your-face demi-billboards will remain up for days. When that happens - when you put up a sign shouldn't last an hour, only to see it standing four days later - that's a feeling that's hard to describe. Seeing something you put up, knowing hundreds of thousands of people read it... HAD to read it... well, it's a damn good feeling, believe me.
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