<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: A brick of a book.
Review: The publisher's trade catalog for this book says 'The only thing better than one boring building is hundreds of them' and the photographer Clive Piercy says of his images 'This is not a book about architecture-or photography. It is a visual poem, a love letter and a simple attempt to help preserve these fantastic, quirky characters'. Well, maybe and this chunky little book delivers 480 photos of them. Piercy was struck by the LA apartment that has the design characteristic of having an open to the street ground floor parking space the width of the building. Flicking through the pages you get the impression that maybe the local builders have formed a cartel to make sure their efforts look as identical as possible, so to add a little bit of individual flavor to their apartments many owners have fixed large numbers or names to the buildings (set in appropriate typestyles, Atomic Bold Italic or Googie Casual Cursive) Piercy photographed many examples of this building detail and being a designer I found these fascinating. A thing I found rather disappointing though, was that nearly all the photos are in black and white and the reproduction makes them look rather grey (I wonder if they were originally transparencies?) so to break up this greyness color graphic elements are scattered through the pages, mostly type dingbats, how appropriate! Piercy is not the only photographer to celebrate the 'Pretty Vacant' style, Jeff Brouws in his lovely book of color photos, 'Readymades' (ISBN 0811836770) has a chapter devoted to ticky tacky homes in Daly City, California, especially interesting because he sought out homes that were painted in bright colors. Lewis Baltz photographed pretty vacant commercial units in his famous 'The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California' (ISBN 0963078569) I bet a copy of 'Pretty Vacant' will be popping up on the coffee tables of architects, designers and those interested in pop Americana.
<< 1 >>
| 
