From
2011 to 2017 I traveled over 100,000 miles by car, focusing my camera on the
massive network of superhighways that has become ubiquitous throughout the
United States. Whether located within an urban environment or leading out to
the last remnants of wilderness, these roadways have been designed to suppress
any distinguishing characteristics of place and instead construct a familiar
and uniform system of functional spaces built for mobility and productivity.
Rather than moving quickly through these spaces however, I have made the
decision to slowly and deliberately dwell within them, looking for unforeseen
moments of humor, pathos and humanity.
My
photographs look at the road as a stage where narratives play out and opposing
forces often collide. The boundaries that line these landscapes, whether real
or imagined, are examined by looking at the separations between public and
private space, privilege and need, the individual and the collective, and the
countervailing ideas of home and escape. The resulting compilation of
photographs depicts the state of America’s infrastructure as a cultural
indicator of its economic, social and environmental circumstances.
Image Captions (from top to bottom)
1. Page,
Arizona, 2013
2. Interstate
75, near Lenox, Georgia, 2014
3. Interstate
5, near Grapevine, California, 2014
4. Interstate
26, near Mars Hill, North Carolina, 2013
4. Parkton,
Maryland, 2005
6. Interstate
70, near Salina, Kansas, 2014
7. Barstow,
California, 2017
8. Interstate
81, near Woodstock, Virginia, 2012
9.. U.S.
Highway 80, between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, 2015
10. Green
River, Wyoming, 2013
11. Interstate
83, Baltimore, Maryland, 2014
12. U.S.
Highway 85 and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, from El Paso, Texas, 2016
book - Joshua is currently crowdfunding to publish this series as a photobook, published by Kehrer Verlag. Please consider supporting this fantastic project… it promises to be one of the photobooks of the year!