Eric S. Goodfield
For more than ten years I have been traveling around the United States taking pictures of payphones, documenting their steady decline and on-going journey into obsolescence. I have images of payphones from over thirty states and I have some very extensive coverage of certain cities. For example I’ve found over 100 payphones in New Orleans and more than 50 in Detroit, Philadelphia and NYC. In my hometown, Oakland, I just finished a photo book of all the payphones on the 107 block stretch of International Boulevard. It's already in several bookstores and I will be announcing its release on February 17th, 2020.
When searching for payphones, I look for neighborhoods that seem forgotten, perhaps neglected — places with character. Even if I only find the remnants of payphones there’s meaning in that. The sheared bolts from a former payphone base sticking out of a cement block, or a wire coming out of a wall — these are the things we overlook, that are part of our disappearing landscape.
When I’m out shooting payphones, people often say to me something like, “You don’t see those anymore.” But the truth is — yes they're vanishing but also we don’t see them anymore because they are no longer important.
Usually, the phones are as neglected as the neighborhoods I find them in. Bankrupt or irresponsible companies have removed the phone but abandoned the housing, leaving a post or a shell a scrap metal remnant. I love it when artists reclaim and re-purpose these fixtures with stylized graffiti, portraits, intense colors somehow making it their own. In airports, I see banks of payphones with just one phone working or converted into video rental spaces, cellphone recharging stations, or free computerized phones with nonstop visual advertising.
All of these photos of the payphones are shot with a cellphone — starting with an iPhone 3G and now an iPhone 11. That choice was intentional and has meaning.
I didn't expect this when I started, but over the years photographing them, I've developed relationships with some of these old payphones. I’ve documented them from functioning, to decayed, to disconnected, to gone. With these pictures I offer a thread of connection by capturing the disappearing landscape of these payphones with my cellphone: The thing that killed the thing.
For more information about the artist, please visit his website.