{"id":10143,"date":"2012-02-18T00:00:10","date_gmt":"2012-02-18T00:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/?p=10143"},"modified":"2014-04-29T01:16:51","modified_gmt":"2014-04-29T01:16:51","slug":"looking-up-to-look-back-the-fading-ads-of-new-york-wfuv-wnet-metrofocus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/2012\/02\/18\/looking-up-to-look-back-the-fading-ads-of-new-york-wfuv-wnet-metrofocus\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Up to Look Back: The Fading Ads of New York – WFUV-WNET – MetroFocus"},"content":{"rendered":"
BOOKS<\/div>\n

Looking Up to Look Back: The Fading Ads of New York<\/h1>\n
George Bodarky and Sarah Berson | February 17, 2012 4:04 AM<\/div>\n
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<\/div>\n
Fading Ads of New York City<\/a><\/div>\n
Author:<\/strong>\u00a0Frank Jump
\nPublisher:<\/strong>\u00a0The History Press
\nPublication Date:\u00a0<\/strong>Nov. 2011<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In 1986, when Frank Jump was 26 years old, he was diagnosed as HIV positive. It was a time when doctors still knew little of the disease. They estimated Jump only had a few years left to live.<\/p>\n

The doctors were wrong. Nearly 10 years after his diagnosis, things started looking up for Jump \u2014 literally.<\/p>\n

In 1997, he \u201cdiscovered\u201d an ad for Omega Oil, a cure-all tonic, painted on the side of a New York City building. It was the beginning of a quest to photograph old ads painted or glued to the sides of city buildings, ads he views as relics of New York\u2019s past. The quest has consumed Jump ever since.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York is a never-ending process,\u201d Jump explained in an interview with\u00a0WFUV\u2019s\u00a0Cityscape<\/a><\/em>. \u201cBuilding and reconstruction and renovation of New York is constant. As new buildings go up and old buildings come down, there\u2019s going to be new ads revealed. It\u2019s exciting to watch. I think this will be something I do until the day I die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jump has displayed his collection of photographs of faded ads in museums and recently compiled them into a book, \u201cFading Ads of New York City<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Jump entered his second decade with HIV, he said that the decaying ads came to represent the friends he lost to AIDS. \u201cI\u2019ve watched many, many, many, many people die. I even have address books with telephone numbers that I just stapled shut because everybody in it was gone,\u201d said Jump.<\/p>\n

Click below to hear\u00a0Cityscape\u00a0<\/em>host George Bodarky\u2019s interview with Frank Jump about the fading ads project:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Podcast:\u00a0Play in new window<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Download<\/a><\/p>\n

The artists who painted the ads, some of which go back to the late 19th century, were called \u201cwall dogs.\u201d When Jump began publishing photographs of the ads on his blog,\u00a0fadingad.com<\/a>, several of the \u201cwall dogs\u201d contacted him from their nursing homes.<\/p>\n

Jump, who is now 52, will stop at nothing in his quest to shoot the ads. He has scaled rickety fire escapes, pulled over on busy highways and walked along elevated train tracks. Jump admits to faking appointments in certain buildings to get up to the roof and even outrunning guard dogs to get the right angle in the right light.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis book tells two stories,\u201d wrote Dr. Andrew Irving, an anthropologist, in the book\u2019s foreward. \u201cThat of New York City and its obsession with money, advertising and renewal over the last 150 years; and the story of the life of a teacher and photographer who has dedicated much of his time to documenting and archiving the hundreds of gigantic advertisements that were painted, often by hand, on the sides of walls and buildings.\u201d Jump feels that the faded ads open a window into the New York of yesteryear and can change the way we see the city.<\/p>\n

Does Jump think the city should restore the ads to their former glory? He says no. Just like every living thing, they were meant to fade away \u2014 or be torn down unexpectedly.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Tags:\u00a0arts and culture<\/a>,\u00a0Books<\/a>,\u00a0city living<\/a>,\u00a0economy<\/a>,\u00a0history<\/a>,\u00a0housing<\/a>,\u00a0Visual Arts<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOKS Looking Up to Look Back: The Fading Ads of New York George Bodarky and Sarah Berson | February 17, 2012 4:04 AM Fading Ads of New York City Author:\u00a0Frank Jump Publisher:\u00a0The History Press Publication Date:\u00a0Nov. 2011 In 1986, when Frank Jump was 26 years old, he was diagnosed as HIV positive. It was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2033,643],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fading-ads-of-nyc-the-book","category-ghost-signs-ghost-ads-other-phantoms"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pXBbJ-2DB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14960,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10143\/revisions\/14960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}