Blacklight poster

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Pictures with messages visible under blacklight

A blacklight poster or black light poster is a poster printed with inks which fluoresce under a blacklight.[1] The inks used contain phosphors which cause them to glow when exposed to ultraviolet light emitted from blacklights.[2][3]

Overview

Two examples of fluorescent blacklight bulbs with light fixtures and packaging and a novelty incandescent bulb.

Although blacklights date to 1903 with the development of the

acid trip.[6]

In the United States, blacklight posters emerged as part of the

advertisements for concerts at venues like the Fillmore and Avalon Ballroom, and further promoted and commercialized by companies like Pandora Productions (established in Minneapolis, 1964) and the Houston Black Light Company (Houston, 1969). Designs ranged from respectful copies of concert posters to prurient adolescent fantasies. At its height radical black artists found inspiration in the aesthetic, such as Faith Ringgold's series of Black Light paintings that eschewed any white pigment, or Barbara Jones-Hogu's prints (especially Relate to Your Heritage). Commercial producers happily reciprocated by incorporating blaxploitation themes into their posters, as in George Goode's series for the Houston Black Light Company and George Stowe Jr.'s work for One Stop Posters.[4]

Since then, the art form has gone out of fashion and is generally viewed as a relic of the 1970s.[8]

Although blacklight posters have continually been produced since the 1960s, there has been a resurgence in popularity since 2007 as blacklight and glow-in-the-dark parties have become more popular[

flocked blacklight posters in a wide range of content, including music, nature, and pop culture. The black parts of these posters are overlaid with black flocking, which gives them a velvet
feel, and these are often referred to as velvet posters.

Artists continue to make use of the material, notably Dorothy Cross's 1998 Ghost Ship (a decommissioned light ship painted to glow at night, evoking the pigment's original military purposes), or Hank Willis Thomas's 2014 screenprints And I Can't Run and Blow the Man Down (exposing black victims under fluorescent light, evoking the pigment's historic association with black radicalism).[4]

References

  1. ISBN 9812387056
  2. ISBN 1580085474
  3. ^ Harris, Tom (2002), How Black Lights Work (1st ed.), HowStuffWorks.com, p. 1
  4. ^ a b c Ensminger, David. "Black Light Panthers: The Politics of Fluorescence," Art in Print Vol. 5 No. 2 (July–August 2015).
  5. ISBN 0-7643-1758-X
    .
  6. ISBN 978-0-8109-7999-4. Archived from the original
    on July 21, 2018.
  7. ISBN 0374529000
  8. ISBN 1581153449
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