Road Trip

Road Trip; photographs from the American West I grew up in the American West. Mostly in Los Angeles, which sometimes puts a glossy veneer on the American Dream. On family vacations, we would get in the car or the camper on my Grandpa’s truck, and drive to the wilder places. Long highways leading to small towns, and vast vistas. Places where churches and strip clubs exist on the same block, where one can buy homemade ice cream, assault weapons, knitting supplies or taxidermy all at the local drugstore. Or where, looking the other direction, the untamed view takes ones breath away. Many of the places I have photographed are changing rapidly, making way for high rises, strip malls, and box stores. There is something quintessentially American about the big highways and lonesome winds, the strange glimpses of the selling of dreams, of momentary pleasures and necessities, the fortune tellers and coffee shops, the sacred next to the profane. America is struggling at the moment, about which way to go, which side to choose, which road to follow. The divides of race, gender, class, and tribe are ever more clearly drawn. With images of my hometown, and the roads leading out from it to the horizon, I am attempting to navigate the wilderness.