Adventures In Fiberglass
Exploring the wacky roadside architecture of Pigeon Forge, TN.
As I mentioned in my last newsletter, I’m going to be posting a little more frequently about my work, focussing more on a particular project or image. First up is a look at my most recent body of work, Adventures In Fiberglass. Hope you enjoy!
It’s a damp, overcast day at the tail end of Spring and I’m in eastern Tennessee, the bad weather having put a halt to my plans. For the past few days I’ve been in the Smoky Mountains working on a project. I now find myself with an enforced day off, aimlessly driving around in my rental car and looking for something to pass the time.
I turn onto a wide street at the edge of town and join the parade of slow moving cars which presumably have somewhere to go. Having travelled a good portion of the US, I’ve become pretty familiar with the layout of small American towns. As I drive by the usual fast food chains, gas stations and budget motels and move further into town, things start to get a little weird.
I pass a bright blue gift shop with a giant, open mouthed bear’s head for an entrance. Then, a mini golf course complete with a full-sized pirate ship and working waterfall. Unsure if I’ve accidentally driven onto a B-movie set, I continue driving towards what appears to be the New York skyline coming into view over the hill. Sure enough, I see cartoonish reproductions of Manhattan architecture and a minivan-sized King Kong clinging to the side of a tower, made to look as much like the Empire State Building as possible without incurring a lawsuit.
Continuing on I drive by more gift shops adorned with giant fiberglass animals, a collapsed clocktower resting on a movie theatre and finally, the most bizarre sight of the day: a scale replica of the Titanic, some 300 miles from the nearest ocean.
This peculiar journey was my first experience of the city of Pigeon Forge.
Sandwiched between Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Dollywood, Pigeon Forge has evolved from a small mountain town into a vacationers playground, attracting an incredible 11 million visitors annually. The fierce competition for tourist dollars seems to have sparked a boom in creative store design in an effort to persuade people to choose their attraction over the others.
I spent the two afternoons photographing Pigeon Forge during the Spring shoulder season, when tourist numbers are relatively low and the city is limbering up for the summer rush. Walking the length of the Parkway, I photographed this extraordinary collection of outlandish buildings mostly from the roadside, or the fringes of their vast (and mostly empty) parking lots.
Adventures In Fiberglass serves as a record of my impression of the wonderful, wacky world of Pigeon Forge, a place where the surreal punctuates the banal and the spirit of American commercialism is on full and joyfully unabashed display.
Further images from Adventures In Fiberglass Can be found on my website.
.
Very cool set of photos! America at its best…