Naima Joy Keith currently lives in Los Angeles where she is a Ph.D.candidate in the department of Art History at the University of California,Los Angeles.
Prior to the mid-20th-century rise of globalization and its attendant international-style architecture, mom-and-pop neon motels and liquor stores that were themed according to various vernacular fantasies prospered along highways throughout America. This vernacular architecture referred to local, traditional, and/or cultural forms associated with a particular region, and reflected the power of design to evoke a sense of place.
Los Angeles based artist Vincent Johnson, through an ongoing series of photographs, engages in the representation of vernacular sites, such as the neon motel from the 1950s and the 1960s. The artist re-frames these locations - re-articulating a vast stream of non-places, on the road. Automobile tourists who dread the monotony of interstate driving rely on symbols of being there, arrival, authenticity. These architectural devices provide a fantasy of place through thematic signage. In some instances, the façades represented in Johnson's series mask the true function of these sites. Here, the iconic neon sign of the motel or liquor store plays with the dichotomy of form and function, such as the palm tree signage of Johnson's Islander Motel photograph. The motel sign becomes a portal for alternative spaces, identities, fantasies. Banal backlit boxes eventually replaced the whimsy of the motel sign as documented by the artist. Johnson¹s photographs point to the evolution and erasure of neon-clad American vernacular architecture.
