Photo Essay
by Kevin Bishop
I
’ve always been intrigued by old signs, especially hand-painted ones, because it’s a lost
art. There’s something to be said for expressionism through stylistic writing.
Advertising today is largely artificial, whereas half a century ago it was commonly
hand-crafted. Signs were meant to inform or entice, evoke an emotion, communicate
through typeface and blank space and contrast as much as through what was written on
them.
Old signs take on an additional dimension when they outlive the people and places
that created them. Like artifacts, they’re scattered all around us, on busy streets, down
unused alleys, on buildings we pass every day, and sometimes (like the mural pho-
tographed here) down seldom-traveled canyons. When we contemplate the past, we
often say, “If these walls could talk…” We forget that they sometimes can, telling us all
kinds of things about the past and the people who inhabited it, reminding us that those
people walked the same streets and alleys and canyons just a moment ago. After all, their
handwriting is still on the wall.
18
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2018