圣地亚哥 1970 年代摄影日志

圣地亚哥 1970 年代摄影日志
San Diego photologs from the 1970s

原始链接: https://www.beautifulpublicdata.com/san-diego-photologs-from-the-1970s/

一批 20 世纪 70 年代圣地亚哥的高分辨率 35 毫米胶片扫描影像现已面世，如同一个生动的“时间胶囊”，展现了当时美国的生活图景。这些由政府收集的摄影记录——可以看作是谷歌街景早期基于胶片的雏形——捕捉到了一个比当今景观更加丰富多彩、充满奇趣的世界。影像揭示了一个由明快柔和的汽车色彩，以及极富创意、往往带有机械装置的商业招牌所定义的往昔时代。与当今标准化的 LED 商店招牌不同，70 年代的招牌采用独特的字体设计，并带有因人工匠心而非计算机精度产生的迷人瑕疵。作者指出，现代平面设计往往难以复制这些手绘作品中所蕴含的有机“人性元素”。除了美学层面，这些胶片还记录了一种更慢的生活节奏，充满了主题餐厅、独特的汽车设计，且完全没有智能手机等现代干扰。通过对这些原始扫描件进行色彩校正，作者揭示了一种阳光普照、类似韦斯·安德森风格的美学，凸显出我们的视觉世界在多大程度上已褪色为灰、白、黑的基调。归根结底，这一影像合集深刻地提醒着人们，现代效率代价之下所丧失的奇趣与个性，激发了人们对那个既有质感又充满生命力的世界的怀念。

Sorry.

原文

A collection of beautiful, high-resolution photolog scans reveals a colorful world of pastel-colored cars and whimsical signage.

The very first post of this newsletter back in 2022 was about Connecticut’s highway photologs from the 1980s. Photologs were essentially an early, film-based version of Google Street View. Almost every state had one of these photolog programs with tricked-out vans logging every mile of road in their state, with some dating back to 1961. The Connecticut footage is a time capsule of the mid 80’s, but the frames are pretty low-res and grainy. While digging through the Internet Archive, I discovered the crispest, most beautiful photologs I've ever seen—captured in San Diego during the 1970s.

Collected by the San Diego Transportation and Storm Water Department, these sharp scans right from the 35mm film source let you peek through a window into the sunny streets of San Diego, full of pastel-colored cars, family restaurants like Bonanza, and some colorful people caught unaware.

One frame from the San Diego 35mm photolog footage. The numbers at the bottom indicate the date, mileage, and direction.

After poring over every frame of the ten videos in this collection, here are my takeaways:

🥩 People ate a lot of steak at themed restaurants
👯‍♀️ There were tons of strip clubs featuring “Go-go girls”
🚗 The range of car colors was amazing, with tons of pastels, bright reds, and a wild variety of greens
🤠 Signs for businesses were WAY more creative, and well-designed with great typography. And many were spinning.
🦩 Our world has lost its sense of whimsy

The original videos hosted on the Internet Archive look to be unaltered, and not adjusted for brightness. I took the liberty of doing some color correction, and boosting the contrast on these films. After removing the grey veil from this footage, I want to jump into this world—a version of Grand Theft Auto set in the sprawling San Diego of 1973.

View the full ten minutes of footage here.

Having grown up on the East Coast in the '70s and '80s, I find a lot of the businesses and landscapes unfamiliar. But some of the businesses like Jack-in-the-Box, Fotomat, Bonanza, and the 76 gas station ball all take me back.

Nice bright colors

I’m really struck by just how colorful everything was. There are some moments captured on these frames that are just incredible compositions of color, geometry, and type.The footage has a distinctly Wes Anderson vibe—the Futura road labels and the warm, sun-washed palette. You can almost imagine Bill Murray or Jason Schwartzman emerging from a perfectly centered emerald-green Datsun parked beneath the blazing pink signs of "LES GIRLS," advertising "BURLESQUE" and "HYPNO-SEX-ISM."

The cars just look so simple. Heavy steel and glass, seat belts nobody used, and a rainbow of shiny colors. Today, cars seem to come in three colors: white, silver, and black. That’s pretty much it. It is truly sad to see how far the typical car has fallen from the colorful options that even basic cars had. Though projects like Slate auto’s DIY wraps do give me hope for a more colorful automotive future.

Just look at the variety of colors from some of the cars on the streets of San Diego back in the early 1970s.

Staring at these frames, I can almost imagine being there. Nobody is looking at a phone. You're rolling down Camino Del Rio smoking a Lark, listening to Rare Earth, before pulling into a Texaco to pay $0.34 per gallon for low-lead Fire Chief gas and fill up your "Mellow Yellow" AMC Gremlin. Later you will go see Charlton Heston in The Omega Man at the Frontier Drive-In.