John Margolies: Roadside America

John Margolies: Roadside America Overview

The native genius of America's mid-era automobile culture

Before the advent of corporate communications and architectural uniformity, America's built environment was a free-form landscape of individual expression. Signs, artifacts, and even buildings ranged from playful to eccentric, from deliciously cartoonish to quasipsychedelic. Photographer John Margolies spent over three decades and drove more than 100,000 miles documenting these fascinating and endearingly artisanal examples of roadside advertising and fantasy structures, a fast-fading aspect of Americana.

This book brings together approximately 400 color photographs of Main Street signs, movie theaters, gas stations, fast food restaurants, motels, roadside attractions, miniature golf courses, dinosaurs, giant figures and animals, and fantasy coastal resorts. In an age when online shopping and mega-malls have reconfigured American consumerism, stripping away idiosyncracy in favor of a bland homogeneity, Margolies's elegiac 30-year survey reminds us of a more innocent unpredictable and colorful past.

Customer Reviews

I own and have read and re-read many of John Margolies' previous books on roadside art and architecture such as "Ticket to Paradise" (movie theaters); "Home Away from Home" (motels); "Pump and Circumstance" (gas stations). These books mix period images, advertising and ephemera with John's razor-sharp, color-saturated Kodachromes. The text on all of these is well researched but not clogged with academic jargon. Clearly, Margolies has a vast knowledge as well as appreciation of the graphic qualities of these once largely ignored (even reviled) manifestations of the spirit of American entrepreneurism.

So, of course, when Taschen announced "Roadside America" - a profile of Margolies and a collection of his stand-alone photographs - I pre-ordered with anticipation and some curiosity to see how they would look, raw against the page unframed by text. They are, I think, the purest evocation of this lost exuberance. Many interpretations of roadside phantasmagoria are sentimental nostalgia. Others have that whiff of satire that sometimes emanates from "art" photography. Margolies' images are iconic, never ironic.

There are photographers whose work is interesting only when accompanied by extensive explanation. There are photographers whose work is intriguing without print accompaniment. There are only a few, like Margolies, which work either way. Although he seems to have made a career of avoiding the attachment of "artist" to his name -- this book will make that hard to do. The physical book is an incredible package -- beautifully printed, beautifully designed. And it's an incredible bargain.

This handsome volume takes us on a trip through the country. His other books have tantalizing insight into old downtowns and commercial districts. Next up, I hope - John Margolies' Main Street. This one we will definitely pre-order too!

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