Garish: Roadside Color Polaroids is a photography collection unlike any other you"ve seen. With his choices of an unconventional title and vivid palettes, Robert Jones accompanies readers on a spirited journey through North America"s sparsely populated outlands. His deeply personal album of glowing snapshots documents scores of unknown sign painters, billboard designers, and creators of garden statuary, whose brilliance lends visual poignancy to thousands of miles of yearly travel on lost highways. In eighty photographs, Jones celebrates such diverse influences on his work as painter Salvador Dali, photographer Walker Evans, and movie director David Lynch."Garish takes three countries usually thought of as having very distinct identities - the United States, Mexico, and Canada - and smudges their borders," writes John DeFore in his perceptive essay. "[Jones emphasizes] the spirit common to the anonymous, self-taught commercial artists who inspire him not just aesthetically, but in their distance from all that is officially deemed "art." "The color is jarring, and Jones makes no apologies for its boldness, nor does he hide behind a facade of "artistic correctness." According to DeFore, this analog collection brims over with "the sentiments of a music fanatic who insists that vinyl records have a warmth compact discs can"t replicate." Adds photographer Keith Laban, "Viewing a photograph by Robert Jones can be an intense experience, as though each image is a distillation of the subject; the senses bombarded by intense hue, foreboding shadow, and unsettling perspective."This is an eloquent, heartfelt, and consequential book. It will literally open your eyes.