Behind The Redwood Curtain

This project started when I came across a description by the Urban Dictionary of the “Redwood Curtain” that really intrigued me. Urban Dictionary: - Redwood Curtain (adj) The Redwood Curtain (RC) is the extreme northwestern corner of California, i.e. the coastal counties of Del Norte, Humboldt and Mendocino. The RC is the northern Californian version of the Iron Curtain in eastern Europe erected during the Cold War and is mostly used in a derogatory sense, whereby the RC symbolizes the area's lack of cultural or metropolitan qualities as well as poor transportation access, sparse development, rugged geography, and a weird provincialism among the native locals. - I did some research and read about the area and then I just decided I had go there. I booked a flight and just went. Not too much planning, just a camera and an open mind. Years ago, breaching the Redwood Curtain meant negotiating Highway 101 as it dwindled to a potholed, two-lane road that twisted in and out of river canyons and slalomed around individual redwood trees. But ‘Caltrans’ has been busy over the intervening quarter-century, straightening the worst of the curves and transforming the road, for the most part, into a modern, four-lane highway. It's shaved close to an hour off the drive and untold wear from drivers' nerves. But the notion of the Redwood Curtain persists, and Humboldt County remains a place apart -- separated by landscape and culture, if not distance, from the rest of California. “Behind The Redwood Curtain” is the first part of a series of portraits of areas in America that are, or at least appear to be a bit apart or different to the surrounding areas.