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11,000 public domain photographs of America's forgotten roadside attractions [1]
['Mark Frauenfelder']
Date: 2025-05-30
The United State Library of Congress has a collection of 11,000 of John Margolies's roadside America photographs featuring novelty architecture from 1969-2008.
According to Bill Guerriero's excellent new Britannica article, Margolies (1940-2016) would "'rent the biggest, most comfortable and foam-padded American car,' preferably a Cadillac, and listen to Top 40 radio stations as he explored the American roadside."
Margolies preferred photographing in the morning, when the light was soft and diffused, noting in Roadside America: "I love the light at that time of day; it's like golden syrup. Everything is fresh and no one is there to bother you." He used a Canon FT 35-mm camera and Kodachrome 25 ASA color film, which requires slightly longer exposure times but yields rich saturated colors. He aimed to produce straightforward images that emphasized a structure's form and limited visual distractions, and he intentionally excluded people and parked cars from his photographs. In a 2011 interview with Forbes magazine, he explained: "I insisted there would be no cars, no people, and no litter and that the sun had to be out. I was interested in…[every photo] having the same visual characteristics."
Here are a few photos from the massive collection:
See also: Foster Beach, shot in a series of images by Boing Boing reader Bill Guerriero, and shared in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool.
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