Notes for Our Legacy is an collection of empty billboards.
The aim is to
The early thesis of my work was highly inspired by the arguments of Jennifer Rose Molina presented in her Master thesis examining outdoor advertising in New Zealand:
“I argue that the implosion of commercial messages into ever increasing amounts of public space has repercussions for our ability to relate to each other as anything other than commercial beings. Outdoor advertising necessitates the use of stereotypes to communicate with its audience. The regulatory mechanisms for advertising sanction this use of stereotypes, which puts commercial needs and rights to free speech before the public’s right to distance itself from commercial messages and values. The discourses of advertising and its progenitors reinforce hegemonic conceptions of gender, class and ethnicity thereby imbuing space with values which do not encourage diversity but promote narrow and limiting options for the self.”
Throughout the years of working with the project my views got broader
As a channel or a medium.
My fascination for empty billboards is nothing unique
Through the years of making the project I've come to realise that my fascination is nothing unique
Through the years of making the project I've come to realise that I'm not the only photographer fascinated by these empty billboards.
Maurizio Montagna's photographic work dwelves aroud space related studies. Before the magnificient 'Toros' his earlier practise was much about billboards, empty as well as self-constructed ones.
In his work 'Billboards' he studied the empty billboards in Milan, and
Notes for Our Legacy pays somewhat of an homage to
My work presents the billboards in different, more global and less
Empty billboards are in covers of
Even another photographer that I've published a book of, Luis Corzo, had done a small project about billboards in Guatemala.
Understanding this, I wanted to continue the work that was close to me.
One of the keywords in
Along the process my
Therefore I decided to exhibit the work as screen printed
The book follows a few very basic rules: keep it to the absolute minimal withour losing content,
I chose to print the book with risograph for two reasons: 1) risograp printing is done using vegetable based inks, without chemical dryers or heat, which makes the process environmentally sustainable. 2) all books are unique with their little imperfections, the craft of printing being in the focus.
The special editon of the book is wrapped to a sheet of paper I have done out of advertisements I have personally removed from public spaces in Stockholm. I have done the act of stripping the ads off nonchalantly on my commute to work, which is the time I see most advertisement. I find this visual pollution very disturbing and simply ugly.
To make paper of the advertisements I first chopped them to tiny pieces, let them soak in water for a few days, and then turned them into a smooth paper pulp using a blender. Then I deluted the pulp with a lot of water in a large plastic tank, and used self-made frames to turn the pulp into new, evenly sized, blank sheets of paper.
The blank wrapping refers to the empty canvases of the billboards, all unique, imperfect and living their own life.
1) PUBLIC SPACES OR PRIVATE PLACES? Outdoor Advertising and the Commercialisation of Public Space in Christchurch, New Zealand
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Mass Communication in the University of Canterbury
By: Jennifer Rose Molina University of Canterbury 2006
2) Maurizio Montagna, Billboards, 2008
3) Maurizio Montagna, Billboard Latronico, 2018
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