Photographer

London’s Ghost Signs in the 80s and 90s, by Peter Marshall

Peter Marshall’s collection of London’s ghost signs from the 1980s and 90s are part of a wider set of historically significant images.

10 May 2022

Exploring the Photography of the 1880s via a Greenwich Ghost Sign

Researching ghost signs is a very hit and miss affair, with dead ends fortunately offset by those that yield myriad clues and new paths to explore. This very faded piece on the wall of a residential property in South East London has been fascinating to investigate, taking me into the wonderful world of late-Victorian photography. […]

7 Dec 2020

Ghost Signs of Montreal & Ottawa from John Toohey

Ghost signs in Montreal, Canada, are an interesting category, due to the bilingual nature of the city and wider region of Quebec. This idiosyncracy has been covered in ‘Sur les murs‘ by Réjane Bougé. (Lovely photographs, contemporary and archival, but sadly the text is only in French!). John Toohey has been documenting some of the […]

24 Aug 2018

Moving Walls to Save a Ghost Sign

In an effort to save this fading and rusting shop front, Beth and Tony Walls moved the entire building 150ft to allow for a highway widening project. Martin Garfinkel of Roadside Gallery has captured it beautifully in this fine art print, available to buy here. Martin tells the story as follows. RE Ringer General Merchandise, […]

14 Mar 2014

Liminal Space: past/presence by Mari Boman

Mari Boman, a photographer, took ghostsigns as the subject matter for her project titled ‘Liminal Space: past/presence’. The result is this series of nine beautiful images of some of London’s most well known ghostsigns. Not only that but the titles offer cryptic clues as to the stories these signs tell us about London’s history and […]

25 Aug 2013

Los Angeles murals photographed by Ernest A. Long

Daniel Lohmann kindly shared the link to this archive of Los Angeles mural photography from Ernest A. Long. There is an introductory article on the Getty education blog and the collection contains 200 images, all taken between 1973 and 1883. Like London it seems that Los Angeles also has a proud tradition of mural art, I […]

28 Jul 2012