Washington Ave & South 10th St

South Philly / Italian Market

Part of this blog project is to think about the various types of ephemera that inhabit city streets, their intended purpose and what they actually do once posted. 

A major category of ephemera is the "missing" sign - here, a labor union makes stickers invoking missing union leader Jimmy Hoffa, or an image of the artist Basquiat (last post), who is a major inspiration for many street artists. 

I've been seeing Missing Pets posters around South Philly - there is one for a horse, a pig, and a spider. They're obviously (?) fake, but are so intentional about using this trope of the public missing poster..

One could also think about the posters that populated streets of lower Manhattan after 9-11, with images and descriptions of people who went missing after the terrorist attack. Since many of these people were presumed dead, the purpose of missing posters was complicated, and symbolic - a means of taking up space, memorializing while unable or unwilling to admit the unthinkable reality of their vanishing.