No Vacancy for Nostalgia
In Viewing Hours, Ben Geier roams the remnants of mid-century America — faded motels, darkened signs, spectral facades — and composes a chromatic requiem of unexpected tenderness.
By Guénola Pellen. Photos by Ben Geier.
Ten years of dusty roads and forgotten stops have fed this body of over one hundred and fifty photographs, gathered across fifteen American states, from Arizona to Wisconsin, New Jersey to Texas.
What strikes first is the palette: washed-out turquoises, powdery pinks, sun-bleached ochres. Each image is bathed in a diaphanous light that lends these deserted places a strange dignity and a Wes Anderson-esque touch.
Ben Geier does not document decay. He transfigures it. His art deco theaters with their silent marquees, his Sinclair gas stations frozen in time become the reliquaries of a deeply cinematic collective imaginary. The book unfolds in six chapters — Signs, Theatres, Restaurants, Motels, Roadside, Storefronts — mapping a sentimental cartography of vernacular America.
Largely influenced by his Midwest upbringing, Ben’s pursuit of photography first began with a fascination for the abandoned. His unmistakable aesthetic and color palette have breathed new life into faded old spaces, and since then he has focused on broadening his work to capture architecture, roadside attractions, and his true passion, all things retro and Americana.
A multifaceted artist, he has spent over 20 years working for numerous design agencies, a quality which can be seen in his work. The composition is impeccable. The gesture itself is radical: to revive, from its very ruins, a certain idea of the American dream.
Viewing Hours by Ben Geier is published by Trope Publishing Co. and available for $55.
