TATTOO REMOVAL

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER RAYMOND LOEWY, the genius behind some of the most imaginative products of the twentieth century, from the streamlined Greyhound bus to JFK’s version of Air Force One, often remarked how much more beloved an object could become if its outer shell was rendered more appealing. He proved it with everything from cigarette packages to locomotives, improving the public perception of everyday brands just by affecting how they were presented. Some might call such transformations superficial, mere makeovers, but they seriously matter when it comes to the visual impact of the everyday.

Photographing cities of a certain age means photographing the infrastructure that is part of their history, that intersection between how a thing performs and whether that performance is beautiful or ugly. There are good signs that our public places are finally taking Loewy’s lead and paying attention to how infrastructures impact our senses, that is, whether they are a delight, or whether, as H.L. Mencken put it, they “lacerate the eye.” For an example, consider San Francisco, a town of many rebirths and resurrections. The present day version of the place is often built upon the scar tissue of one or other of its prior eras. Things burn down. Thing crumble in quakes. Thing fall to the changing priorities and passions.

Even making pictures in a location as lovely as the Bay City can mean being force to focus through something hideous, like the mad tangle of electrical and cable car lines blocking the grandeur of the venerable building seen here. Above-ground telephone wires are vanishing from many places, and being designed out of the visual layout of newer towns, as are other remnants of bygone periods in American growth, but much remains to be done, a kind of cultural tattoo removal that shows we can, indeed, get out of our own way, that the beautiful signature of one kind of energy is not cancelled by the bad thinking of another kind.

In the meantime, the transition itself is photo-worthy, even important. Like Loewy often remarked, “good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black, and the aesthete unoffended”. In the interim, pictures can help us mark both our progress and our regressions, and both kinds of images serve to make us knowable to ourselves.