Signs of the Times

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign #16 |

A mural in Cincinnati that depicts a sign painter in action using “distressed” techniques in which the painter creates the illusion of an old and faded sign, but all at once from scratch on a brand new sign.

Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, October 18, 2016

An elaborate painted sign, of four completed in three days in 2015 by “lettermen,” as artistic sign painters call themselves, who met for a convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, and stopped by the American Sign Museum in the industrial Camp Washington neighborhood to see the museum and demonstrate their trade. Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, 2016. -10-18. Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016632971/. (Accessed April 02, 2017.)

Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Purchase; Carol M. Highsmith Photography, Inc.; 2016; (DLC/PP-2016:103-4).
Forms part of the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.

Highsmith, a distinguished and richly published American photographer, has donated her work to the Library of Congress since 1992. Starting in 2002, Highsmith provided scans or photographs she shot digitally with new donations to allow rapid online access throughout the world. Her generosity in dedicating the rights to the American people for copyright free access also makes this Archive a very special visual resource.

Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
– selected spot and/or scratch removal
– cropped for composition and/or to accentuate subject matter
– straighten image