Location Taken: Columbia River Gorge (border of Oregon and Washington)
Time Taken: June 2008
You know what this reminds me of? Those old art deco style promotional posters for travel destinations made in the first half of the 1900’s. Here’s some examples, if you don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s those posters you occasionally see touting the grandeur of some far-away place (or, more likely these days, the local nifty things, since that’s why the restaurant or hotel that has them on display bought them in the first place, the local color). They usually have bold colors, clean lines, and a fantastic use of perspective to make the place seem fantastic.
This photo, if I cleaned it up and made it into an art deco style painting, would fit right into those posters. It really does give that sense of “Travel!” and “Awesome place to visit!” (yes, complete with exclamation marks) that was the goal of those old promotional pieces. Heck, even the photo could fit in with them, since there’s nothing modern hidden away in the piece. Just trees, mountains, road, more trees, and a truck.
I really like those old posters. There were some hanging on the walls of the lounge at my college’s old student union where my friends and I often met up to chat and do homework. Those ones were mostly about the Indiana Dunes beachland a few miles north, plus a few railway promotionals for the rail line that connects the dunes and Chicago, the South Shore Line.
I also recently bumped into a few more at an old-style hotel in Wyoming, promoting the fantastic local canyons, so they’re fresh on my mind.
They’re fantastic posters, and I do encourage looking at more of them. Be mindful, though, that about 99% of the places online that have images of them are poster shops selling them. That’s why I don’t have more examples to show you, though I’d love to be able to. It’s tough filtering out all the dross of selling sites to get to the ones that are just showing them off.
Still, if you just do a google image search for “vintage travel posters” or “20’s travel posters” or the like, you’ll see plenty of examples. Enjoy!
