Dec 23, 2013
Leeds city centre in the 1950s was a place that had to be closed down and abandoned some afternoons due to the severity of the smog from surrounding factories - the air was simply too thick with dirt to safely breathe - and the obscure neon glow of a restaurant sign dimmed by industrial murk is as valid an image of neon’s heyday as the clear, clean air of a desert drive-in movie. Those signs, mounted on poles under endless American skies, will be the ones that make it into the advertising history books; but in Leeds we interpreted our advertisers’ neon messages through a cloud of grit.
(via Neon: Burning Light at Gallery Munro House — The City Talking)
