Blank Billboards

Outdoor advertising is a booming business and Los Angeles has near ideal conditions for the format. The advertisers describe those conditions in the following way: "With the highest congestion index in the nation, Los Angeles spends nearly 1.8 million vehicle hours in congested traffic every day. The Los Angeles marketplace is home to 5 of the nations top traffic bottlenecks. 98.8% of Los Angeles residents use an automobile for their daily commute." (clear channel outdoor)

At least 10,000 'bulletins' (a 14'x48' advertising copy panel elevated on a metal structure) cover the city and display consumer messages. As Paul Meyer, CEO of Clear Channel Outdoor boasts, "we are the one unavoidable media…You can't change the channel. We're there." But, in the time between marketing cycles these billboards are occasionally stripped bare and left to wait for the next sales campaign.
This series of photographs captures bulletins across Los Angeles during this interval.

Aaron Whelton