2013 June – Fading Ad Blog

Is this what urban authenticity is all about; letting the material layers of yesterday live on in peace and speak their wisdoms to us through their decayed beauty? This question comes to mind as soon as I start to look at the beautiful photographs in Frank Jump’s Fading Ads of New York City. Jump has devoted 15 years to scouting these ads, some of them more than 100 years old. Fading ads, also called ghost or vintage ads, are old advertisements painted directly onto exterior walls, which have then been protected from the elements by either new adjacent buildings or a favorable northern exposure. Since discovering his first faded ad in 1997, Jump has carried out his urban visual archaeology all over the city. The book showcases his earliest work, a ‘double documentation of obsolescence’ (34) through the use of now distinct Kodachrome positive slides, rendering gorgeous vintage-style photographs. Featuring essays by an urban historian and a visual anthropologist among others, the book is divided into commercial sections of ads such as ‘Breweriana’, ‘Music and Entertainment’ and ‘Savings, Loans and Fur Vaults’ making the book an excellent urban visual lexicon of bygone companies and ad painters. Moreover, Jump contextualises many of the photographs through excerpts of interviews and anecdotes, as well as citing what others have written about his work in blogs and magazines. In his photographs, Jump puts his finger on the escaping sense of urban authenticity, pinpointing these mundane material layers of the city (the ads were often seen as vulgar nuisances in their own time) that have survived the forces of urban gentrification, these visual winks from those that came before us.

Jump also briefly touches upon the problem of conservation, or rather, the problem with conservation: should these signs be restored to ‘their former glory’ (58), or should they be respected and praised precisely because of their decayed beauty? This philosophical question ties in with the book’s overall aim of not just documenting the fading ads, but also narrating, through his own words and others’, Jump’s personal story with being diagnosed with HIV at the age of 26. The struggle to live with this disease for more than half his life becomes interwoven with the existential dimensions of the fading ads, seen by Jump ‘as signs of life, metaphors for survival’ (87). The ads have survived through the decades, and like many people with HIV and aids, often under adverse circumstances and against all modernist and commercial odds. The ‘sense of urgency’ (28) with which Jump has traced and documented these ads rings with the urgency he must have felt in the face of his illness, giving an edge to his work, reminding us that all dimensions of the city go together.We and our bodies are also material parts of the big urban machine and we will all fade away.

This interwoven approach makes for a rewarding read;however, it is also that which fully packs and somewhat clutters the book, making it difficult to sometimes focus and follow its thematic threads. The book wants to stand on two legs, but once in a while it doesn’t seem to know which one. Above all, I keep wishing for more space for Jump’s beautiful images, instead of their too often being crammed into pages with words. Generally, I would have preferred more emphasis on the photos in the layout, and for the texts to be slimmed down and more stringently edited. In addition, I would have loved to see these old-school Kodachrome photographs reprinted larger on sturdier and less glossy paper (think e.g. Camilo José Vergara’s visual work in American Ruins (1999)). However, I can without doubt understand the editing dilemmas (and costs) that must have gone into laying out the book from such an extensive material, and these are marginal comments that should not overshadow the fact that Jump’s book is a devoted and impressive personal project that has regaled us with a rich visual history of an often overlooked part of the mundane urban tapestry. – Ann Kroon, Stockholm University – Published online: 03 May 2013.