Grand View Motel Neon Sign, Raton, New Mexico, Steve Fitch, 1981

photographic support, h 204mm × w 255mm More details
© Steve Fitch

Colour photography only hit its stride in the 1970s. Photographers suddenly looked at the vernacular landscape through different – coloured – glasses. They saw facets that had not yet been noticed: the discordant colours of graffiti, or the pink and green glow of neon light. For his photographic series Diesels and Dinosaurs Fitch singled out these typically American expressions of advertising and light architecture. Later, as a sculptor, he began making his own neon installations