SIGNOLOGY
Sign spotting is a way to discover a city. Signs - neon signs as well as painted signs - are not only carrier of informations, meanings and moods, they are also defining spaces and give an offset in depth to a (nightly) city silhouette.
Neon tubes don't get hot, and they don't have to stand pressure. If manufactured carefully, without retaining mechanical tensions from the bending process, neon signs are weather-proof and can survive several decades. In most cases, especially when the motif is simply a writing, it's hard to specify their age. Their design usually doesn't show much zeitgeist.
As for the painted wall signs this is different. Usually painted signs are not as old as they seem to be at first glance. This is of course due to the fact that they are exposed to rain, sunlight and all temperatur grades as well as to air pollution.
To appear on this site, the neon signs (as far as they are intact at least in parts) should be switched on - the exception proves the rule. Besides this there's a special page for broken neon signs.
The neon signs usually are readable or recognizable, so they are ordered by motifs and within the motifs usually by alphabet; sometimes similar motifs are pooled.
In contrast to this, many of the painted signs are hardly readable, sometimes they cannot be assigned anymore. Therefore they are ordered by location.
All photos have been taken more or less in passing (some of them by Andreas Kosek or MzDe), using a simple digisnapper without any filters, lighting or special lenses. Sometimes the reproduction of colors is a bit strange, and especially neon objects behind glass are hard to shoot without polarization filter. But no professional intentions are included anyways, so be it. Enjoy!
-jr