SuThe Floating World: Thirty-six Views from Pacific Coast Highway

These photographs were captured roadside on a personal pilgrimage touring a 120 mile stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway. This portfolio is inspired by Katsushika Hokusai’s 1830 "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji,” Ando Hiroshige’s "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road," ukiyo-e innovators and Ed Ruscha’s 1963 road-trip inspired "Twenty-six Gasoline Stations," which is considered to be the first modern artist's book. In their vitally important 19th Century publications, these artists established a new major theme of ukiyo-e, the landscape print, or fūkei-ga, with a special focus on famous views, or meisho. They were also the first Japanese artists to focus on the landscape as a featured subject of art rather than a backdrop. These photographs feature landscape as subject, the road trip as a pilgrimage, and memorialize popular views that have long served as shooting locations for Hollywood films to the present day.