Everywhere Was Wherever

Everywhere Was Wherever ‘Everywhere was Wherever’ presents a series of images captured in an 18-day 6000 mile solo motorcycle trip across the USA. Anonymous remnant facades replace the familiar, romantic portrayals of roadside Americana. Like locations for a yet to be made film, these lonely edifices sit incomplete yet interchangeable. In these images is a search for both personal and geographical identity. Every intersection presenting a choice, yet every destination feeling the same. These buildings stand as witnesses to the transient and rootless. The road is a lonely place where almost everybody seems lost. These images direct us to pay attention to scenes and details habitually passed over, presenting beauty in unlikely places. With the outward expansion and relentless franchising of roadside America there is a loss of place and texture. I note the lament of America’s decent into ‘placelessness’ in Howard Kunstler’s ‘The Geography of Nowhere’. It is a country transformed from vital places and communities to a land where every place is no place in particular. In photographer Jeff Brouw’s monograph ‘Approaching Nowhere’ William L. Fox writes; “the vernacular was in peril. Everywhere was wherever and there is no escaping it”. Damien Drew