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HOMMAGE TO AN OLD CAST-IRON SIGNBOARD - REVISITED, MAY 2012

In 2005, when internet 2.0 was still young and I was a new, enthousiastic flickr-fan, I uploaded a set of pictures of and about a beautiful old signboard I have been carrying around with me since 1972... As of today (May 16th) that set has been viewed 2498 times. It's main picture, the general overview of the signboard, no less than 17.762 times.

The set both told a story from my personal history and also led the viewer via non-linear notes through different detail images of cast iron, rust, peeling paint and decay.

I have now decided to photographically revisit the board. Why? Two reasons.

First, the passing of time changes the board slowly but surely. Look at the original overview from 2005 and compare it to the current one. Look closer via the non-linear notes at the details in the 36 new close-ups and see how the working of time has created countless new abstracts in layers of paint, rust and metal .

Second, in the years passed I have come into the possession of more images and even super8 film material of those long gone days in the 1970's when I acquired the board. It's fun to add these to the story which is not only part of my young years but by now may also provide some insight into a disappearing era of Amsterdam history. Besides, I have illustrated the new version of the story here below with numerous extra images, videos, songs and texts, available on the internet today but certainly not then!

So, let me retell that story:

In the early seventies of the last century the Jordaan, Amsterdam’s oldest workers quarter, just outside the ring of canals, was still just that; a workers quarter , well known throughout the country for its distinct dialect/language, (sub)culture of music, songs , stories, jokes, kitschy interiors, etc. Since then gentrification has hit the area big time and nowadays it is mostly a yuppy-ish inner city neighbourhood with lots of fancy restaurants, deli’s, shops and galleries.

I moved into the area in 1972 as one of the first students/outsiders to do so. In fact, my friends and I rented an old warehouse, which for the previous hundred years (at least!) had housed a business in scrap metal and old textile ("lompen en metalen"): four empty floors, in the middle a hole with double hatches and on the top floor an old, 19th century cast iron pulley-block to haul the wares up and down.

Our first job was to clear out the remnants of the old business before we could start converting the building into liveable apartments. Everything had to be done: bathrooms and kitchens, staircases, electricity, heating, you name it. A lot of work but we loved it and the neighborhood, looked upon our work with growing appreciation and respect. In the pictures here, here, here and here (recently rediscovered between old negatives) my friend Frans and I are working on the downstairs window and the beautiful cast iron grill in the door window.

Outside, hanging from the wall, was the old signboard. It had hung there many, many years. On its outer layer it reads “buying textiles and olds metals, firm of A.Smit” but showing through is the lettering of an earlier sign when the business was owned by one W.C. Pannekoek or Pancake…

Recently some old super8 film resurfaced that I shot in and around the house in approx. 1975. Images of the attic wirh the pulleyblock, the street, the stairs we built, the bar across the street (age old and renowned 'Rooie Nelis'), in fact even the signboard itself (in a much better state...), they all come by silently...

The signboard became a trophy that hung in my apartment for the eight wonderful years I lived in the building and which afterwards I lugged with me from one house to the next. It didn’t hang on the wall anymore and usually ended up hanging in this shed or standing in that one but I never got rid of it. Today it attracts a lot of attention as it 'guards' the entrance to my modest garage gallery in Bellingwolde.

With time the different layers of crumbling paint, together with the rust shining through provided the signboard with changing patterns of color, texture and rhythm. It is these patterns I have tried to capture again in this new series of images which can be approached at random by clicking on the different notes in the picture.