Judy Fiskin



The Judy Fiskin photographs that were included in the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach's Long Beach Survey of 1979, are an intimate encounter with a mock typology. The survey of the rides isn't a pretentious record of import. It is instead, a sentimental record of a fragment of an important dream. The elements of the rides/architecture are isolated and the viewers, by the nature of the small scale of the images, are presented with a more accurately imbedded psychological representation of a period gone by The amusement park rides of the old Long Beach Pike photographed during the daytime, are removed from the context of the magical light and sounds of the night. In the still light of the day, the viewer sees the imperfections and age of the rides. That which remains as an experience of intimacy registers in memory. The reference to time reminds us of distance and of a moment gone by. The era when the turn of the century, burgeoning municipalities of the coast erected their beach side amusement parks and piers to attract the visitors is juxtaposed with the vision of a derelict site void of human presence.




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