Main Streets USA: Photographic Explorations of Fantasy, Reality & Memory

October 1–19, 2018

Reflections Gallery, University of Idaho

This is introductory text. This is introductory text. This is introductory text. This is introductory text. This is introductory text. This is introductory text. This is introductory text. This is introductory text. This is introductory text. This is introductory text. This is introductory text. This is introductory text.

In the spirit of Ed Ruscha's self-published books documenting his Streets of Los Angeles project, etc.

Digital Photography  |  Creative Direction  |  Identity + Mark  |  Exhibit Design  |  Graphic Design

IN GALLERY

This is text.

This is text.

What & Where is Main Street?

As it evolved in time and space, Main Street became the commercial and social heart of the American small town; as it developed in our collective thought, Main Street became an integral part of American culture. Because many people left small towns in the early to mid-twentieth century, these places became repositories of memories. — Richard V. Francaviglia, Main Street Revisited

Because daily life since the turn of the twentieth century has changed so dramatically, Main Street (as it was designed then) continues to be a source of nostalgia in American culture. It is a romantic place, a simple place, a safe place—as well as a slower place. A place before the automobile and highways and traffic and smartphones and fast food and even faster lives.

Step Panoramics

The format for compiling these linear streetscapes is something I call step panoramics. As opposed to the famous photomontages of David Hockney, which he called joiners, the intent is not to capture a subject with a variety of overlapping perspectives. Instead I use computer software to warp my photos to remove lens distortion, conflicting vanishing points, and overlaps. I call these photomontages step panoramics because I do not use a panorama feature on the camera itself or panorama photomerge software in post-production. Rather I take a series of photos of a streetscape, one after the other, a few yards apart. I then assemble these “steps” on the computer manually.

Whether with seamless images such as my panoramics of Marceline, or the segmented ones of the Disney park Main Streets, I am interested in a different kind of surrealism than Hockney. The linear orientation of these streetscapes is preserved; that is, everything is plum, level, and upright. Yet, the montages are still unreal. The unreality—the artificial construction—of these images comments on the nature of personal and national memory, reflected in places like Main Street all across America, and at Disney parks all over the world.

During the summer of 2017, I embarked on a road trip continuing my field research in thematic design, and one of my stops was the childhood home of Walt Disney: Marceline, Missouri. Note that although these individual blocks appear to vary in scale, clicking them will enlarge the images to a common height. Step Panoramics, 2018. Photography, July 2017.

Walt Disney only lived in Marceline for a relatively short period of time, from age 4 to 9 (1906–1911), but it impacted him greatly. The Disney family arrived in April 1906, when the town was less than twenty years old, and lived there for just over five years. Back then Marceline was a lively stop on a busy railroad line—the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. With a population of less than 2,500 people, today the town is quiet, feeling almost abandoned. Many local businesses have closed over the years, though the Walt Disney Hometown Museum opened in 2001, housed in the town’s restored Santa Fe Railroad Depot.

When I visited Marceline, I was kind of disappointed. The Disney Version has (for so many Americans) taken the place of the “Real” Main Street. I came expecting the mental images I had been primed with from years of visiting Disneyland as a child.

What & Where is Main Street USA?

To make a model—in the case of Disneyland, to recreate the Marceline, Missouri, of a turn-of-the-century boyhood—was to return to those happy, bygone times as a competent adult. To make a model was to construct or reconstruct one’s own biography. To make a model of an ideal past was to reject an imperfect present. — Karal Ann R. Marling, As Seen on TV

Walt Disney often spoke of his fondness for the five years he spent in Marceline, Missouri as a child; he called it the most influential period of his entire life.As such, a representation of those memories was central to his conception of the Disneyland park—so much so that it forms the entry corridor to the entire experience. Each and every guest must walk down Main Street USA to access all the other lands and attractions in the park.

Although the original Main Street USA is based on Walt’s memories of Marceline, Missouri, the majority of the design work was based on studio artist Harper Goff’s memories of growing up in Ft. Collins, Colorado. Main Street USA is famously designed using forced perspective (an art direction technique used in building movie sets) in which structures get smaller as they get taller, making them feel larger than they actually are. The first floor is 7/8th life-size, the second is 5/8th, and the third story is approximately 1/2 scale.

Disney designer John Hench called Main Street “scene one” which makes sense because Disneyland was not designed by architects. Draftsmen were employed to develop workable construction drawings, but all the structures in the park were designed by people from the motion picture industry: art directors, scenic designers, illustrators, cinematographers, and concept artists.

Note that although these individual blocks appear to vary in scale, clicking them will enlarge the images to a common height. Step Panoramics, 2018. Photography, July 2008.

Disney’s Main Streets Around the World

During 2007–2008 field research for my MFA thesis Themerica, I traveled to thematic design sites across the globe, from Las Vegas to Dubai. My documentation included all eleven Disney theme parks. Five of these Magic Kingdom-style parks feature some version of Main Street USA. Shanghai Disneyland, which opened in 2016, transformed the Main Street USA model into a collaged fantasy streetscape called Mickey Avenue.

Walt Disney World opened in Orlando, Florida five years after Walt Disney died, but preliminary design work for it began before he passed away. The Magic Kingdom park is based on the layout of the original Disneyland with improvements in mostly organization and landscaping. The Main Street USA at the Magic Kingdom is more broadly Victorian in design, and much larger than the one at Disneyland. Many of the same designers worked on both parks, though there is very little of Walt’s Marceline memories here.

The Japanese have no familiarity with (and thus no nostalgic affinity for) small town American life. However, the Victorian period as seen through a British lens is widely appreciated. Thus the Disney designers decided on a more generic presentation of “gingerbread trim” for Tokyo Disneyland’s World Bazaar. The entire streetscape is enclosed in a glass canopy because rain and snow in Tokyo are as regular as New York City. World Bazaar was not designed using forced perspective, so the second and third stories of the buildings are used for retail and dining continuing from the first floor.

The Main Street USA at Disneyland Paris is the most elaborately themed and detailed of all the Disney parks. It was thought that with so much world-class art and architecture spread across Europe, the designers had to go to greater lengths to create immersive environments. Initially the plan was for a streetscape themed to the 1920s, but eventually this was discarded in favor of the more broadly Victorian look of the Magic Kingdom. The French associate the romance of America with the bustle of business, so this Main Street USA features large billboards and other advertising graphics which are unique to this park.

This is the first and only time that Main Street USA from the original Disneyland has been duplicated. Each and every facade is nearly identical to its twin in Anaheim, although there were small aesthetic changes made for context. For example, the “Penny Arcade” was renamed “Centennial Hall” because the site of the Hong Kong park is called “Penny’s Bay.” The street is also covered entirely in brick pavers, whereas at Disneyland only the sidewalks are bricked. So if you’re in China standing on a replica of a Main Street in California which is a replica of a Main Street which never actually existed in the first place…where are you?

Campaign & Collateral

This is text.