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| Steve Fitch, Gallup, New Mexico, March, 2002, archival pigment print, 15 x 15 inches, $650 |
photo-eye Gallery is excited to announce Steve Fitch: American Motel Signs 1980 - 2018, an online solo exhibition by renowned photographer Steve Fitch. This exhibition corresponds with Fitch's recent photobook American Motel Signs II 1980 - 2018, published by The Velvet Cell.
In American Motel Signs, Steve Fitch documents the changing landscape, capturing the bright neon motel signs littered across long highway expanses throughout the West.
The delightful photographs in this series, map out Fitch’s extensive journey to seek out a typology of visual relics that are quickly fading into the American collective memory. For Fitch, these motel signs carry an unquestionable enchantment in their folk originality — the blocky fonts and garish designs. His work is a road trip to the past, down lonesome highways where these emblems of roadside American culture, despite their declining numbers, still remain.
Steve Fitch: American Motel Signs 1980 - 2018 uses photo-eye’s new VisualServer X website builder and is the fifth in photo-eye's series of online exhibitions.
In American Motel Signs, Steve Fitch documents the changing landscape, capturing the bright neon motel signs littered across long highway expanses throughout the West.
The delightful photographs in this series, map out Fitch’s extensive journey to seek out a typology of visual relics that are quickly fading into the American collective memory. For Fitch, these motel signs carry an unquestionable enchantment in their folk originality — the blocky fonts and garish designs. His work is a road trip to the past, down lonesome highways where these emblems of roadside American culture, despite their declining numbers, still remain.
Steve Fitch: American Motel Signs 1980 - 2018 uses photo-eye’s new VisualServer X website builder and is the fifth in photo-eye's series of online exhibitions.
I am attracted to photographing motel signs because they are like trail markers for my highway explorations.
"The signs I photographed are all one-of-a-kind, designed and fabricated by local sign shops that employed skilled craftsmen such as metal workers, neon benders and painters. They were signs found mostly along our country's two-lane highways before the onslaught of motel franchises with the exact same sign at dozens or hundreds of locations throughout the country. All Motel 6 signs, for example, are identical, whereas the signs that I discover and like to photograph are each unique — there is only one. In some ways, they are like folk art to me.
It also doesn't particularly matter that they are motel signs. What does matter is the idea of theme and variation, how a collection can be interesting because of the variety of specimens. A collection of butterflies illustrates this idea, for example, and photography is such a great medium for "collecting and comparing," which is what my motel sign project is ultimately all about. I can make photographs of signs that exist in different locations and display them together in a manner that allows the viewer to make his or her own comparisons. The contemporary word for this is 'typology,' I believe."
"The signs I photographed are all one-of-a-kind, designed and fabricated by local sign shops that employed skilled craftsmen such as metal workers, neon benders and painters. They were signs found mostly along our country's two-lane highways before the onslaught of motel franchises with the exact same sign at dozens or hundreds of locations throughout the country. All Motel 6 signs, for example, are identical, whereas the signs that I discover and like to photograph are each unique — there is only one. In some ways, they are like folk art to me.
It also doesn't particularly matter that they are motel signs. What does matter is the idea of theme and variation, how a collection can be interesting because of the variety of specimens. A collection of butterflies illustrates this idea, for example, and photography is such a great medium for "collecting and comparing," which is what my motel sign project is ultimately all about. I can make photographs of signs that exist in different locations and display them together in a manner that allows the viewer to make his or her own comparisons. The contemporary word for this is 'typology,' I believe."
— Steve Fitch
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| Steve Fitch, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 1980, archival pigment print, 15 x 15 inches, $650 |
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| Steve Fitch at work |
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All prices listed were current at the time this post was published.
For more information, and to purchase prints, please contact Gallery Director Anne Kelly or Gallery Assistant Patricia Martin, or you may also call us at 505-988-5152 x202