Things Are Looking Up

Philip Ringler

2011

Things Are Looking Up is a series that explores the surreal and often unsettling experience of encountering roadside attractions as if in a dream. These high-contrast black-and-white images transform the fleeting kitsch of Route 66 into something heavier—images layered with dark symbolism, humor, and an eerie sense of inevitability.

This series was born in response to the financial crisis of the time, a moment that felt like the beginning of America’s deepening fractures. As the country struggled with economic instability, political discord, and an uncertain future, roadside attractions—those relics of optimism and escapism—took on a different meaning. Once cheerful distractions along the highway, they began to feel like artifacts of a fading illusion.

The work honors these landmarks but also distorts them, reinterpreting their bright, absurd appeal into something more cryptic. Giant fiberglass horses, towering dinosaurs, and oversized mascots become silent, looming figures, presiding over landscapes that feel abandoned and existentially hollow. The images carry a sense of suffering and death—not in an obvious way, but in the way a forgotten amusement park feels haunted by its own history.

Photographed on Kodak Technical Pan 35mm film and processed with a specialized developer, the series achieves both full tonal range and stark contrast, further amplifying its dreamlike, hyperreal quality. The film’s unique characteristics allow shadows to deepen into near abstraction, while highlights remain razor-sharp, pushing the sense of unease even further.

Like much of my work, Things Are Looking Up plays with ambiguity, contradiction, and the uncanny. It asks what happens when the things meant to entertain us become the things that unnerve us—when the fantasy of the roadside attraction collapses into something more existential.