The Billboard Creative project

I entered a contest of sorts. It’s a really cool sounding art competition that gets your work seen in the wild. This particular exhibition is sponsored by The Billboard Creative and features work that they curate and put on billboards around Los Angeles. I hadn’t heard of it but was made aware of its existence by my fellow artist friend Lola. She has been very helpful in making me aware of some of the networking possibilities, exhibitions etc… available to artists. She is a successful working artist. Nice. You can see some of her lovely work here lolasartwork.com Please if you can take the time to do so.

I was allowed to enter up to nine images for consideration. I thought this would be a great opportunity for my payphone project.  I set about the task of developing a style for display and choosing images that seem to work for the design. To do this I had to figure out what deliverable would need to be should the exhibition choose one or more of my images. I went to their website in an effort to figure out they would need to display my work. I found an image on their website that showed what the dimensions of the billboards are and I decided to make my work a high DPI scaled down version of those dimensions. This makes sense right? 

Because of the way I shoot my payphone project it is more vertically oriented than horizontal. I felt that this pretty much made it so I could only really fit my work on one style of billboard that the Billboard Creative uses. It’s essentially a square that is slightly more vertical than horizontal. It measures 26’x24’. I made a template that was 26”x 24” at 300 DPI and hoped that would work out. I think it will. I hope it will.

The template is similar to my Luna Was Hear sticker. That is a project commemorating the death of my beloved doggy and best friend Luna. You can see it here: ericgoodfield.com/lunawashere. I love that project. For the billboard I wanted to have a strong image and a readable, clear and classic font that would tell the lovely people of Lost Angeles a little about what they are seeing. This information being the project name, Disconnected, and where a particular payphone is located for example Philadelphia, Detroit or Los Angeles. 

I imposed some rules upon myself for this project. I would not use more than one image from a particular city and I had to use an images from Los Angeles, NYC and my home base Oakland. I had a template. It was now time to go through some of the archive of images I had banked over the 10+ years I’ve been doing this project. This is not an easy task. As you can imagine I have a lot of payphone pictures. The images I have are somewhat organized. Somewhat.

I tried to make it simple on myself. I pretty quickly decided on a few specific images and places that I wanted highlight. This made it so I had seven images and or places with two more to as wild cards. Sounds easy right? Not for me. I have payphone pictures from over thirty states and many more cities than that. Another thought I had was that in order for someone to have an idea of what they are seeing was that the pictures I chose must have a context around them. I figured this meant that close ups would not work for this particular exhibition. When I shoot a payphone I almost always take numerous pictures to give it context and to give it detail. Wide shots and close ups. It is my gaol to really capture the state of the payphone at that moment in time. This is typically 15 to 30 shots of the payphone depending on how interesting it might be. The more a payphone has been decorated, decayed the better. 

Here’s what I chose. I love when I get the chance to go back and review pictures of payphones I’ve shot in the past. I invariably have a memory associated with them. They are still visual reminders of what I was thinking at the time and what may have occurred on that shoot.

Disconnected in New Orleans:

I love this one so much. It perfectly captures the state of payphones in America today. It could be the poster child. Bowed Down, gutted (the actual phone is gone) and waiting to be removed. I shot this payphone in 2018 and 2019 almost exactly a year apart. Other than someone stuffing the carcass of a roast chicken inside it the payphone had not changed much. I’ll spare you the image but not the thought. In 2018 I spent days in a car driving all over the city trying to get as many payphones as I could. All told I shot over 100 payphones in New Orleans, a huge haul for any city. I met a lot of people during the process and had some great conversations about payphones, about life in general and New Orleans in particular. Each time I shot this payphone I talked briefly to a gentleman across the street hanging out on his stoop. This phone is very clean for being on a clearly unused lot. I shot video and tons of images of this phone including wide, medium and close up shots. This is a very strong payphone and would be an integral part of a very extensive New Orleans payphone show. I had a lot of great interactions with people in this town and only one less than pleasant experience.

Disconnected in Philadelphia

So much to unpack about my shoot in Philly. Included in my search for payphones I also went to a bunch of really good record stores- Long in Tooth really stood out. I also made it my duty to taste famed Philly sandwiches. John’s Roast Pork was the clear winner for me featuring a great cheese steak and a magnificent roast pork sandwich (get it with the broccolli rabe!). I found over 50 payphones while in Philly and I think that this would be an epic show. This particular guy was on Broad Street and he had the coolest way of standing. He stood poised like the ultimate sentry for the Ultimate Grooming Salon. I got this shot while we talked about the payphone. He didn’t know when it had become disconnected. This is of course is not surprising. We seldom see what we no longer value. Even if it’s right in front of us. This was the first time I had ever seen a particular free call list sticker- I laughed out loud when I saw the toll free Jerry Springer number listed. Does he still have a show?

Disconnected in Dallas

This image happened by pure chance. I had a few hours before my flight back home and I set out to shoot some payphones. I had stopped to shoot a payphone across the street in front of a small independent drive-thru fried chicken shack. I was standing in the middle of the street. When I turned around I saw this gentleman walking right in front of a bus stop that had an empty payphone there. I hadn’t even seen the payphone! I love this shot. I see a lot in this image. What do you see? Dallas has a lot of cool payphones on the fringes of the city. Fort Worth has some great ones too.