The Open Road: Photography & the American Road Trip

(Hardback)

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Description

The road trip is an enduring symbol in American culture. Ever since cars became widely available, the road stretching over the horizon has represented a sense of possibility and freedom, discovery and escapea place to get lost and find yourself. The American road trip has appeared prominently in literature, music, and movies, but it has had an especially powerful influence on photography. As photographers have embarked on trips across the United States with the express purpose of making work, they have created some of the most important photographs in the history of the medium: from images by Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Berenice Abbott to Robert Franks seminal 1950s odyssey, The Americans. From Stephen Shore to Ryan McGinley, hundreds of other photographers have continued the tradition.
The Open Road is the first book to explore the photographic road trip as a genre. It opens with a comprehensive introduction, which traces the rise of road culture in America and considers photographers on the move across the country and across the century, from the early 1900s to present day. Each chapter explores one body of work in depth through informative texts and a portfolio of images, beginning with Robert Frank, and including such renowned work as Garry Winogrands 1964, Joel Sternfelds American Prospects, William Egglestons Los Alamos, and Alec Soths Sleeping by the Mississippi. The Open Road is a visual tour de force, presenting the story of photographers for whom the American road is muse.

Reviews

David Campanys study of the great photographic odysseys across America reveals a country more diverse than ever. The Guardian
David Campany compiles a photographic boulevard of broken dreams running from the Swiss immigrantRobert Franks nomadic portraits of 1950s stragglers to the sinister 21st century manipulations of the team Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs, who document roads that exist only in some collective hallucination. The New York Times LENS blog
The vastness is also eroticits a void urban photographers and their subjects can disappear into. The New York Times LENS blog
By the end, you'll feel as if you've been in the passenger seat for a page-by-page road trip of a lifetime. Los Angeles Times
From shots of Mount Rushmore and the Pacific Coast Highway to glimpses of everyday life at roadside motels and pit stops, the photos highlight Americans long-standing fascination with the road, as a window into both the countrys cultural lifewith the car window as a literal frameand its pioneering attitude. The Wall Street Journal

Author Bio

David Campany is a curator, writer and educator, based in London. His previous books include Walker Evans: The Magazine Work, The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip and A Handful of Dust, each of which was accompanied by an exhibition. Awards received by Campany include the ICP Infinity Award and The Kraszna-Kraus Book Award.