December 1999 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Contest Winner!

From the Society for Photographic Education (SPE)
1999 Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference
"Living in the Sprawl Zone"
Your Nicest Street
Jan Faul and Barbara Scheide

Because the claim of being anyone's nicest street is so obviously a lie, and being so illustrates nicely the chief deformity of contemporary American culture: that we are addicted to lying, especially about the condition of our common home. What's more, as evidence of our moral failure, of how willing we are to embrace the untrue, lying successfully can be accomplished with just a few pat phrases posted on wood -- as in, "the Lord hath spake and declared this to be your nicest street." Okay then, it is so! What I like especially is the totemic presence in the background of all the artifacts that drain this place of reward or redemption: the excessively-wide street, the chain-link fence, the chemically-nurtured lawn, the sidewalk leading nowhere, the pine trees symbolizing "nature," and the catastrophe of late industrialism looming above the whole scene like one of H.G. Wells's Martian war machines.