THE PROFANE AND PROFOUND: AMERICAN ROAD PHOTOGRAPHY FROM 1930 TO THE PRESENT

A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

by Han-Chih Wang Diploma Date August 2017

Examining Committee Members:

Professor Gerald Silk, Department of Art History Professor Miles Orvell, Department of English Professor Erin Pauwels, Department of Art History Professor Byron Wolfe, Photography Program, Department of Graphic Arts and Design THE PROFANE AND PROFOUND:

AMERICAN ROAD PHOTOGRAPHY FROM 1930 TO THE PRESENT

ABSTRACT

Han-Chih Wang

This dissertation historicizes the enduring marriage between photography and the American road trip. In considering and proposing the road as a photographic genre with its tradition and transformation, I investigate the ways in which road photography makes artistic statements about the road as a visual form, while providing a range of commentary about American culture over time, such as frontiersmanship and wanderlust, issues and themes of the automobile, highway, and roadside culture, concepts of human intervention in the environment, and reflections of the ordinary and sublime, among others.

Based on chronological order, this dissertation focuses on the photographic books or series that depict and engage the American road. The first two chapters focus on road photographs in the 1930s and 1950s, Walker Evans’s American Photographs, 1938;

Dorothea Lange’s An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion, 1939; and Robert

Frank’s The Americans, 1958/1959. Evans dedicated himself to depicting automobile landscapes and the roadside. Lange concentrated on documenting migrants on the highway traveling westward to California. By examining Frank’s photographs and

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comparing them with photographs by Evans and Lange, the formal and contextual connections and differences between the photographs in these two decades, the 1930s and the 1950s, become evident. Further analysis of the many automobile and highway images from The Americans manifests Frank’s commentary on postwar America during his cross-country road trip—the drive-in theater, jukebox, highway fatality, segregation, and social inequality.

Chapter 3 analyzes Ed Ruscha’s photographic series related to driving and the roadside, including Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962 and Royal Road Test, 1967. The chapter also looks at Lee Friedlander’s photographs taken on the road into the mid-1970s.

Although both were indebted to the earlier tradition of Evans and Frank, Ruscha and

Friedlander took different directions, representing two sets of artistic values and photographic approaches. Ruscha manifested the Pop art and Conceptualist affinity, while Friedlander exemplified the snapshot yet sophisticated formalist style.

Chapter 4 reexamines road photographs of the 1970s and 1980s with emphasis on two road trip series by Stephen Shore. The first, American Surfaces, 1972 demonstrates an affinity of Pop art and Frank’s snapshot. Shore’s Uncommon Places,

1982, regenerates the formalist and analytical view exemplified by Evans with a large 8- by-10 camera. Shore’s work not only illustrates the emergence of color photography in the art world but also reconsiders the transformation of the American landscape, particularly evidenced in the seminal exhibition titled New Topographics: A Man-Altered

Landscape, 1975. I also compare Shore’s work with the ones by his contemporaries, such as Robert Adams, William Eggleston, and Joel Sternfeld, to demonstrate how their ii

images share common ground but translate nuanced agendas respectively. By reintroducing both Evans’s and Frank’s legacies in his work, Shore more consciously engaged with this photographic road trip tradition.

Chapter 5 investigates a selection of photographic series from 1990 to the present to revisit the ways in which the symbolism of the road evolves, as well as how artists represent the driving and roadscapes. These are evident in such works as Catherine

Opie’s Freeway Series, 1994–1995; Andrew Bush’s Vector Portraits, 1989–1997;

Martha Rosler’s The Rights of Passage, 1995; and Amy Stein’s Stranded, 2010.

Furthermore, since the late 1990s, Friedlander developed a series titled America by Car,

2010, incorporating the driving vision taken from the inside seat of a car. His idiosyncratic inclusion of the side-view mirror, reflections, and self-presence is a consistent theme throughout his career, embodying a multilayered sense of time and place: the past, present, and future, as well as the inside space and outside world of a car.

Works by artists listed above exemplify that road photography is a complex and ongoing interaction of observation, imagination, and intention. Photographers continue to re-enact and reformulate the photographic tradition of the American road trip.

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Dedicated to my mother and the memory of my father

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It has been a privilege to write a dissertation in these years, and I owe tremendous debts of gratitude to several mentors who have inspired and guided me during this amazing journey. I want to thank the members of my dissertation committee at Temple University, Professors Gerald Silk, Miles Orvell, and Erin Pauwels for their advice and support. Dr. Silk has shared his enthusiasm about automobile culture, and its symbolism in modern and contemporary art with me since I arrived at Temple University.

Dr. Orvell has offered his insightful comments and generous support over the years as I continue to move forward. Towards the completion of the dissertation, I also greatly appreciate countless exchanges with Dr. Pauwels as I envisioned the next phase of this project and navigated through the tradition of American art. In the meantime, Professor

Byron Wolfe, who served as my external reader, provided helpful responses from the perspective of a professional artist, especially relating the visual representation of the

West to the physical experience of road travel. Special thanks must be extended to Dr.

Shao-Chien Tseng because this research was first conceived in her seminar on landscape and space more than ten years ago at the National Central University in Taiwan, where I

iv completed a thesis on Stephen Shore’s photographic road-trip series.

Like many road trips, writing a dissertation also requires substantial financial support. In the early stage of my dissertation research, I was supported by the Studying

Abroad Scholarship from the Ministry of Education of Taiwan from 2012 to 2014. I was fortunate to receive a dissertation fellowship from the Terra Foundation for American Art that allowed me to be in residence at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in

Washington D.C. (SAAM) from 2014 to 2015. William Truettner, senior curator emeritus and my mentor at SAAM, has been supportive of my research. He shared his personal account with me about automobiles in American life as someone who was born in the mid-1930s and grew up in Detroit. He also encouraged me to explore the iconographic connection between the West and automobile travel in America. It was at SAAM where I first crystallized my thoughts about the visual and material culture of automobiles and the roadside as a historian of American art, especially for shaping the first chapter on road photographs in the 1930s. As such, I have benefited from conversations and critical dialogues with my fellow colleagues at SAAM and other scholars I met during the period of my fellowship in residence in D.C. I am grateful to Amelia Goerlitz, manager of the fellowships and academic programs at SAAM, especially for her warm welcoming

v personality and all logistical assistance.

I also am indebted to various types of support from Temple University. I was a

Graduate Research Associate at the Center for the Humanities at Temple University

(CHAT) from 2015 to 2016, joining biweekly workshops and sharing thoughts with my colleagues in an interdisciplinary setting. In my last semester of writing, I was awarded a

Dissertation Completion Grant from the Graduate School at Temple University. This support was crucial in allowing me to focus on writing, finishing the last mile and completing this dissertation journey in time. I am thankful for this opportunity. During the course of dissertation writing, I received grants from Tyler School of Art multiple times, specifically the Dean’s Grant and Thomas Eakins Travel Grant funded by the Art

History Department, allowing me to travel and actively participate in national and international conferences to exchange ideas with scholars and colleagues. To this end, I want to thank Dean Hester Stinnett, Dr. Elizabeth Bolman, and Dr. Ashley West for their administrative support and continuous encouragement over time.

Finally, I certainly need to thank my friends and family for spiritually and physically helping to sustain me through this long journey. I owe a great deal to my parents. I would not have accomplished this much and traveled this far without their

vi sacrifices and unconditional love. This dissertation is dedicated to my mother,

Yang-Kuang (Maria) Lo, and to the memory of my father, Shou-Ning (John) Wang.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………….i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS…...……………………………………………………….viii

INTRODUCTION ROAD MATTERS IN AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY……………………………..….xx

CHAPTER 1 THE VISUAL LEGACIES OF THE 1930S: WALKER EVANS AND DOROTHEA LANGE…………………………………………1

CHAPTER 2 ON THE ROAD IN THE 1950S: RETHINKING ROBERT FRANK’S THE AMERICANS…………………………….....86

CHAPTER 3 DOUBLE STANDARD: ED RUSCHA AND LEE FRIEDLANDER IN THE 1960S…………………………...163

CHAPTER 4 SEARCH FOR THE (UN)COMMON AMERICA: STEPHEN SHORE’S AUTO GRAND TOUR………………………………………...236

CHAPTER 5 DRIVE, LOOK, AND PHOTOGRAPH: ROADSCAPES SINCE 1990………………322

CONCLUSION AMERICAN ROAD RE-ENCOUNTERED…………………………………………...365

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………376

ILLUSTRATIONS……………………………………………………………………...394

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1 Walker Evans, Roadside Gas Sign, 1929 from American Photographs, Part I, plate 8.

1.2 Walker Evans, Lunch Wagon Detail, New York, 1931 from American Photographs, Part I, plate 9.

1.3 Walker Evans, Parked Car, Small Town Main Street, 1932, from American Photographs, Part I, plate 10.

1.4 Walker Evans, Parked Cars and Elm Trees on Broadway, from High Elevation Saratoga Springs, New York, 1931, from American Photographs, Part I, plate 27. (also known as Main Street, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1931)

1.5 Walker Evans, Main Street of County Seat, Alabama, 1936 or Main Street, Greensboro, Alabama, from American Photographs Part I, plate 26, Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

1.6 Walker Evans, Street Scene, Greensboro, Alabama, 1936, FSA Collection.

1.7 Walker Evans, Roadside View, Alabama Coal Area Company Town, 1936, or Roadside Gas Station and Miners’ Houses, Lewisburg, Alabama, Dec 17, 1935, from American Photographs, Part II, plate 7, FSA Collection.

1.8 Walker Evans, Roadside Gas Station with Miners' Houses across Street, Lewisburg, Alabama, Dec 17, 1935.

1.9 WalkerEvans, Scott’s Run Mining Camp Near Morgantown,West Virginia, 1935, FSA Collection.

1.10 Walker Evans, Highway Corner, Reedsville West Virginia, June 1935.

1.11 Walker Evans, Roadside Stand near Birmingham, 1936 from American Photographs, Part I, plate 35.

1.12 Walker Evans, Garage in Southern City Outskirts, 1936, or Garage, Atlanta, Georgia, 1936 from American Photographs, Part I, plate 25, FSA Collection.

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1.13 Walker Evans, Westchester, New York, Farmhouse, 1931, from American Photographs, Part II, plate 8.

1.14 Thomas Gainsborough, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, 1749, oil on canvas, 69.8 x 119.4 cm, National Gallery, London.

1.15 Walker Evans, Street Scene with Parked Cars, Mule-Drawn Wagon, and Bucket Seat Model T Ford in Foreground, Marion, Alabama, 1936, FSA Collection.

1.16 Walker Evans, Sidewalk in Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1936 from American Photographs Part I, plate 24, FSA Collection.

1.17 Walker Evans, Main Street Block, Selma, Alabama, Dec. 1935.

1.18 Walker Evans, Country Store and Gas Station, Alabama, 1936 from American Photographs, Part II, plate 14, FSA Collection.

1.19 Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930, Oil on canvas, 35 3/16 x 60 1/4 in., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

1.20 Edward Hopper, Sunday, 1926, Oil on canvas, 29 x 34 in., The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.

1.21 Edward Hopper, Gas, 1940, Oil on canvas, 26 1/4 x 40 1/4 in., Museum of Modern Art, New York.

1.22 Walker Evans, Joe’s Auto Graveyard, Pennsylvania, 1936 from American Photographs, Part I, plate 7, FSA Collection.

1.23 Used Car Week, Chicago, 1929, LIFE magazine, by Associated Press.

1.24 Walker Evans, Houses and Billboards in Atlanta, 1936 from American Photographs, Part I, plate 47, FSA Collection.

1.25 Unknown Artist, Front Street, Looking North, Morgan City, LA, 1929, Postcard, Walker Evans Archive, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

1.26 Walker Evans, Street Scene, Morgan City, Louisiana, 1935.

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1.27 Covered Wagon1939 Style, Dorothea Lange, Again the Covered Wagon, near Holtville, Imperial Valley. February 1939. Again the covered wagon. Immigrating carrot puller camp from An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion, FSA Collection.

1.28 Oklahoma Land Rush, 1893, historical image from the Oklahoma Historical Society from An American Exodus.

1.29 Statistics from the FSA and California Department of Agriculture, showing the origins of the migrants to California from An American Exodus, FSA Collection.

1.30 Dorothea Lange, U.S. 99, San Joaquin Valley, November, 1938 from An American Exodus, FSA Collection.

1.31 Margaret Bourke-White, Bread Line during the Louisville Flood, Kentucky, 1937.

1.32 Dorothea Lange, Billboard on U.S. Highway 99 in California. National Advertising Campaign Sponsored by the National Association of Manufacturers, 1937, FSA Collection.

1.33 Dorothea Lange, Toward Los Angeles, California, March 1937, FSA Collection.

1.34 Dorothea Lange, Highway to the West, U.S. 54, New Mexico, 1938 from An American Exodus, FSA Collection.

1.35 Dorothea Lange, homeless family traveling on the road she encountered in Atoka County, Oklahoma June 16, 1938 from An American Exodus, FSA Collection.

1.36 Carleton E. Watkins, Cape Horn near Celilo, 1867.

1.37 Dorothea Lange, Southwestern New Mexico, June 1938, FSA Collection.

1.38 Meindert Hobbema, The Avenue at Middelharnis, 1689, Oil on canvas, 103.5 x 141cm, National Gallery, London.

1.39 Dorothea Lange, An American Exodus, p. 60, FSA Collection.

1.40 John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath, 1940, film still.

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1.41 John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath, 1940, film still.

1.42 Dorothea Lange, A Family with 7 Children from Paris, Arkansas, on the Highway near Webber Falls, Oklahoma, June 27, 1938, FSA Collection.

1.43 Otto Hagel, Lettuce Strike, 1936 in Dorothea Lange, An American Exodus, p.138.

1.44 John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath, 1940, film still.

2.1 Robert Frank, Covered Car—Long Beach, California, 1955 from The Americans.

2.2 Robert Frank, U.S. 91, Leaving Blackfoot, Idaho, 1956 from The Americans.

2.3 Robert Frank, U.S. 285, New Mexico, 1955 from The Americans.

2.4 Robert Frank, New York, 1951.

2.5 Robert Frank, View from Hotel Window, Butte, Montana, 1956 from The Americans.

2.6 Robert Frank, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1955 from The Americans.

2.7 Robert Frank, Car Accident–U.S. 66, between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona, 1955-1956 from The Americans.

2.8 Robert Frank, Crosses on Scene of Highway Accident–U.S. 91, Idaho, 1956 from The Americans.

2.9 Robert Frank, St. Francis, Gas Station, and City Hall, Los Angeles, 1956 from The Americans.

2.10 Robert Frank, Assembly Line, Detroit, 1955 from The Americans.

2.11 Robert Frank, Candy Store, New York City, 1955-1956 from The Americans.

2.12 Robert Frank, Café, Beaufort, South Carolina, 1955-1956 from The Americans.

2.13 Robert Frank, Bar, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1955 from The Americans.

2.14 Robert Frank, Bar, New York City, 1955-1956 from The Americans.

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2.15 Robert Frank, Restaurant, U.S. 1 Leaving Columbia, South Carolina, 1955 from The Americans.

2.16 Robert Frank, Drive-in Movie, Detroit, 1955 from The Americans.

2.17 Robert Frank, Charleston, South Carolina, 1955 from The Americans.

2.18 Gordon Parks, Airline Terminal, Atlanta, Georgia, 1956, Gordon Parks Foundation.

2.19 Robert Frank, Trolley, New Orleans, 1955 from The Americans.

2.20 Robert Frank, Fourth of July - Jay, New York, 1956 from The Americans.

2.21 Robert Frank, Canal Street, New Orleans, 1955 from The Americans.

2.22 Robert Frank, Funeral, St. Helena, South Carolina, 1955 from The Americans.

2.23 Robert Frank, Belle Isle, Detroit, 1955 from The Americans.

2.24 Robert Frank, Detroit, 1955 from The Americans.

2.25 Robert Frank, Public Park, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1955 from The Americans.

2.26 Robert Frank, Main Street–Savannah, Georgia, 1955

2.27 Robert Frank, Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955 from The Americans.

2.28 Walker Evans, Sidewalk and Shop Front, New Orleans, 1935, from American Photographs, Part I, plate 5.

2.29 Robert Frank, Hoover Dam, 1955.

2.30 Robert Frank, U.S.90, en route to Del Rio, Texas, 1956 from The Americans.

3.1 Dennis Hopper, Double Standard, 1961.

3.2 Ed Ruscha, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962, Contact Sheet.

3.3 Ed Ruscha, Fina–Groom, Texas, 1962, original frame of the contact sheet.

3.4 Ed Ruscha, Fina–Groom, Texas, 1962, final print. xii

3.5 Ed Ruscha, Hudson–Amarillo, Texas, 1962, original frame.

3.6 Ed Ruscha, Mobil–Shamrock, Texas, 1962, original frame.

3.7 Ed Ruscha, Enco–Conway, Texas, 1962, original frame.

3.8 Ed Ruscha, Gas, 1962, Lithograph, 20 x 15 in. Published by the artist, purchased by Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, CA.

3.9 Ed Ruscha, Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1962.

3.10 Ed Ruscha, Standard Station with Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half, 1964, Oil on canvas, 65 x 121 1/2 in., Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, TX.

3.11 Vija Celmins, Freeway, 1966, Oil on canvas, 17 1/2 x 26 3/8 in. Image Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York.

3.12 John Baldessari, The Backs of All the Trucks Passed While Driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, California, Sunday, 20 January, 1963, 1963.

3.13 Ed Ruscha, Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1963, Oil on canvas, 64 1/2 x 121 3/4 in., Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.

3.14 Ed Ruscha, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966.

3.15 Ed Ruscha holding his book Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1967.

3.16 Ed Ruscha, from Thirtyfour Parking Lots, 1967.

3.17 Ed Ruscha, Royal Road Test, 1967.

3.18 Ed Ruscha, Royal Road Test, 1967.

3.19 Lee Friedlander, Haverstraw, New York, 1966.

3.20 Lee Friedlander, Monsey, New York, 1963.

3.21 Lee Friedlander, Galax, Virginia, 1962.

3.22 Lee Friedlander, Baltimore, 1962.

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3.23 Lee Friedlander, Lone Star Café, Texas, 1965.

3.24 Ed Ruscha, Beeline, Holbrook, Arizona, 1962.

3.25 Lee Friedlander, Route 9W, New York, 1969.

3.26 Lee Friedlander, Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, 1969.

3.27 Lee Friedlander, New Orleans, 1968.

3.28 Lee Friedlander, New Orleans, 1969.

3.29 Lee Friedlander, Volunteer Fireman, Walden, New York, 1972.

3.30 Robert Frank Barber Shop through Screen Door—McClellanville, South Carolina, 1955 from The Americans.

3.31 Lee Friedlander, Butte, Montana, 1970.

3.32 Lee Friedlander, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1972.

4.1 Stephen Shore, Potter County Courthouse, 1971 from Amarillo.

4.2 Stephen Shore, Polk Street, 1971 from Amarillo.

4.3 Stephen Shore, A Road Trip Journal, July 8, 1973.

4.4 Stephen Shore, American Surfaces, 2005 package cover.

4.5 Stephen Shore, Grand Canyon, Arizona, June, 1972 from American Surfaces.

4.6 Stephen Shore, Durango, Colorado, June, 1973 from American Surfaces.

4.7 Stephen Shore, Amarillo, Texas, July, 1972 from American Surfaces.

4.8 Andy Warhol, Refrigerator, undated.

4.9 Stephen Shore, Clinton, Oklahoma July, 1972 from American Surfaces.

4.10 Stephen Shore, Springfield, Illinois, July, 1972 from American Surfaces.

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4.11 Stephen Shore, Amarillo, Texas, July, 1972 from American Surfaces.

4.12 Stephen Shore, Raleigh, North Carolina, June, 1972 from American Surfaces.

4.13 Stephen Shore, Delray Beach, Florida, March, 1973 from American Surfaces.

4.14 Stephen Shore, Cape Kennedy, Florida, April-May, 1973, from American Surfaces.

4.15 Garry Winogrand, Apollo 11 Moon Shot, Cape Kennedy, Florida, 1969.

4.16 Stephen Shore, Rolla, Missouri, July, 1972 from American Surfaces.

4.17 Stephen Shore, Mineral Wells, Texas, June, 1972 from American Surfaces.

4.18 Stephen Shore, Amarillo, Texas, Aug., 1973 from American Surfaces.

4.19 Stephen Shore, Canyon, New Mexico, July, 1972 from American Surfaces.

4.20 Stephen Shore, Memphis, Tennessee, December, 1973 from American Surfaces.

4.21 Stephen Shore, Room 125, Westbank Motel, Idaho Falls, Idaho, July 18, 1973 from Uncommon Places.

4.22 Stephen Shore, Richland Mall, U.S. 30, Mansfield, Ohio, July 5, 1973 from Uncommon Places.

4.23 Stephen Shore, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, July 17, 1973 from Uncommon Places.

4.24 Stephen Shore’s Doug’s Bar B Q No. 1, 1971 from Amarillo.

4.25 The Famous Blue Grill on U.S. 40, Elmo, I.L. from Martin Parr’s Boring Postcards USA.

4.26 Dixie Diner, Hwy. No. 301 and Interstate 95, Kenly, N.C. from Martin Parr’s Boring Postcards USA.

4.27 Stephen Shore, U.S. 89, Arizona, June 1972 from American Surfaces.

4.28 Timothy O’Sullivan, Sand Dunes, Carson Desert, 1867.

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4.29 Stephen Shore, I-8, Yuma, Arizona, September 23, 1974 from Uncommon Places.

4.30 Stephen Shore, U.S. 97, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973 from Uncommon Places.

4.31 Toledo Car at the Grand Canyon, Grand View Point, Arizona, 1902, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

4.32 Stephen Shore, Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, California, June 21, 1975 from Uncommon Places.

4.33 Stephen Shore, Sidney Lust’s Drive-in Theatre, U.S. 1, College Park, Maryland, January 21, 1976 from Uncommon Places.

4.34 Stephen Shore, West Ninth Avenue, Amarillo, Texas, October 2, 1974 from Uncommon Places.

4.35 Stephen Shore, Sugar Bowl Restaurant, Gaylord, Michigan, July, 7, 1973 from Uncommon Places.

4.36 Stephen Shore, U.S. 10, Post Falls, Idaho, August 25, 1974 from Uncommon Places.

4.37 Stephen Shore, Presidio, Texas, February, 21, 1975 from Uncommon Places.

4.38 Wim Wenders, untitled, undated, from Einmal, 1994 / Once, 2001. (presumably taken in 1983)

4.39 Stephen Shore, Room 219, Holiday Inn, Winter Haven, Florida, November 16, 1977 from Uncommon Places.

4.40 Stephen Shore, Brownsville, Tennessee, May 3, 1974 from Uncommon Places.

4.41 Stephen Shore, Amarillo, Texas, July, 1972 from American Surfaces.

4.42 Stephen Shore, Cedar Springs Road, Dallas, Texas, June 5, 1976 from Uncommon Places.

4.43 Lee Friedlander, House on Highway, 1975.

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4.44 Stephen Shore, Bozeman, Montana, 1981 from Uncommon Places.

4.45 Robert Adams, Mobile Homes, Jefferson County, Colorado, 1973.

4.46 Robert Adams, Outdoor Theater and Cheyenne Mountain, 1968.

4.47 Robert Adams, Along Interstate 25, 1968-71.

4.48 Robert Adams, Newly Occupied Tract Houses, Colorado Springs, 1968.

4.49 Frank Gohlke, Landscape, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1974.

4.50 William Eggleston, Southern Environs of Memphis, 1971 from William Eggleston’s Guide.

4.51 William Eggleston, Memphis, 1969 from William Eggleston’s Guide.

4.52 Gallery view, Signs of Life: Symbols in the American City, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1976.

4.53 William Eggleston, untitled from Los Alamos.

4.54 Stephen Shore, Sandusky, Ohio, July, 1972 from American Surfaces.

4.55 William Eggleston, Mississippi, 1971-74 from Los Alamos.

4.56 William Eggleston, untitled, from Election Eve.

4.57 Stephen Shore, U.S. 1 Arundel, Maine, July 17, 1974 from Uncommon Places.

4.58 Joel Sternfeld, Roadside Rest Area, White Sand, New Mexico, September, 1980 from American Prospects.

4.59 Joel Sternfeld, Near Lake Powell, Arizona, August, 1979 from American Prospects.

4.60 Joel Sternfeld, McLean, Virginia, December, 1978 from American Prospects.

4.61 Joel Sternfeld, Exhausted Renegade Elephant, Woodland, Washington, June 1979 from American Prospects.

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4.62 Joel Sternfeld, After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California, July 1979 from American Prospects.

4.63 Joel Sternfeld, Pendleton, Oregon, June 1980 from American Prospects.

4.64 Joel Sternfeld, Buckingham, Pennsylvania, August, 1978 from American Prospects.

5.1 Wim Wenders, Paris, Texas, 1984, film still.

5.2 Wim Wenders, Paris, Texas, 1984, film still.

5.3 Catherine Opie, Untitled # 1, 1994, from Freeways.

5.4 Catherine Opie, Untitled #38, 1995, from Freeways.

5.5 Andrew Bush, Women racing southwest at 41 mph along 26th Street near the Riviera Country Club, Pacific Palisades, California, at 1:14 p.m. on a Tuesday in February 1997 from Vector Portraits.

5.6 Andrew Bush, Man heading south at 73 mph on Interstate 5 near Buttonwillow Drive outside of Bakersfield, California, at 5:36 p.m. on a Tuesday in March 1992 from Vector Portraits.

5.7 Andrew Bush, Man traveling southeast on Route 101 at approximately 71 mph somewhere around Camarillo, California, on a summer evening in 1994 from Vector Portraits.

5.8 Martha Rosler, Interstate 80, New Jersey, 1995 from Rights of Passage.

5.9 Martha Rosler, Donuts, New Jersey Turnpike, 1995 from Rights of Passage.

5.10 Martha Rosler, Prospect Expressway, Brooklyn, 1995 from Rights of Passage.

5.11 Martha Rosler, Ocean Parkway, South Brooklyn, 1995 from Rights of Passage.

5.12 Martha Rosler, George Washington Bridge, 1996 from Rights of Passage.

5.13 Lee Friedlander, Nebraska, 1999 from America by Car.

5.14 Lee Friedlander, Savannah, Georgia, 2008 from America by Car. xviii

5.15 Lee Friedlander, Montana, 2008 from America by Car.

5.16 Lee Friedlander, Death Valley, California, 2008 from America by Car.

5.17 Lee Friedlander, Death Valley, California, 2008 from America by Car.

5.18 Lee Friedlander, New City, New York, 2008 from America by Car.

5.19 Amy Stein, Peri, Route 64, Kentucky, 2005–2008 from Stranded.

5.20 Amy Stein, Gary, West Virginia, 2005–2008 from Stranded.

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INTRODUCTION

ROAD MATTERS IN AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY

“Road matters” is a play on words. On the rhetorical level, it means that the road is important; in the literal sense, the phrase references the themes and issues related to the road.1 This dissertation historicizes the enduring marriage between photography and the

American road trip as evidenced in its tradition and transformation. I contend that the road should be considered a photographic genre. The research focuses on why and how photographers, individually and collectively, picture America on the road, integrating imagination and idealization in visual representation. The ultimate purpose is to investigate the ways in which road photography makes artistic statements about the road in a visual form, while providing a range of commentary about American culture over time—such as frontiersmanship and wanderlust, issues and themes of automobility, concepts of human intervention in the environment, and reflections of the ordinary and sublime, among others.

Road photography also could be considered as a subgenre of landscape

1 The play on words is inspired by Liz Wells’s work on landscape photography. See Liz Wells, Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011) xx photography. In Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity, Liz Wells asserts, “Photography works very directly in terms of geography, autobiography, and metaphor, but mapped over this are questions of themes, form and politics that anchor image-making in relation to contemporary issues, and in terms of aesthetics.”2 In the same vein, for road photography, this dissertation raises a set of questions, and speculations are explored through critical analysis of specific series or body of work, especially road photography’s interrelatedness with the art world, popular culture, and

American history.3 In light of geography, the dissertation revisits the ways in which photographers identify and represent the American landscape. It also reassesses various intentions and contexts for photographers who traveled on the road. Some were driven by personal experience, artistic concern, or previous photographic tradition; others took to the road for the public audience or depiction of other’s encounters.

Borrowing expressions used in describing roadside environment and architecture in an exhibition organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of

Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1970, The Highway, I use “profane and profound,” in this

2 Wells, Land Matters, 8–9.

3 Ibid. xxi dissertation as a means to conceptualize and contextualize American road photography by integrating its relationships to the common and material aspect of the automobile, highway, and roadside culture, as well as to its status in the visual arts, especially photography.4 Each road photograph embodies a cultural meaning and aesthetic significance. I examine why and how the American road has become a subject matter, a muse, and a pilgrimage for photographers.

The first fundamental question is the difference between road photography and a genre that existed earlier, namely, street photography.5 More explicitly, Stephen S.

Prokopoff, in The Highway, provided a basic useful definition of the road:

4 My word choice of “profane and profound” derives from the essay written by Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi for the 1970 exhibition called The Highway, in which they discussed the “profane and profound messages of architecture for a fast-moving, mass society.” See Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, The Highway (Philadelphia, PA: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1970), 16.

5 For the development of street photography, see Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz, Bystander: A History of Street Photography (Boston, MA: Bulfinch, 2001). It is worth noting that there is overlapping between street and road photography, as several photographers in the study are sometimes considered street photographers, such as Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Lee Friedlander. For example, in Bystander, both Evans and Frank are discussed and referenced as the pivotal figures in two out of four chapters in the book. Yet, their photographs need to be situated and understood in a larger context. For example, although a good proportion of Evans’s photographs depict street scenes, some were taken in small towns that could not be reached easily unless traveling by an automobile on highways and country roads, especially considering the primary mission for Evans while affiliated with the Farm Security Administration was to document the lives of rural farmers. Therefore, the fact that Evans traveled on the road extensively should not be overlooked. His images include documentations of major cities, small towns, and rural areas, as well as places in between, including various roadside services. Evans’s act of travel may be compared to one of his contemporaries, Edward Hopper, also known for depicting subjects encountered during travel, such as roads, bridges, train stations, gas stations among others. Similar to Hopper, Evans also documented the city, country, and spaces in between, especially the road. See Sarah Powers, “Edward Hopper: City, Country, and the Spaces in Between” in Images of Tension: City and Country in the Work of Charles Sheeler, Thomas Hart Benton, and Edward Hopper (PhD diss., University of Delaware, 2010), 177. xxii

The road, connector of distant places, link in the chain of passage, seems always and perhaps inevitably to have been charged with potent, universally felt meanings. Transformed into the modern highway through the mass production of the automobile it has affected American life and though as have few other contemporaneous experiences.6

Prokopoff reconsidered and redefined the meaning of the road along with its relevant subjects, including automobile and highway culture, and its relationship to American life.

For the purpose of the exhibition, The Highway, he further clarified:

An exhibition on the subject of the highway must embrace its inseparable adjuncts, the motorcar and the roadside, its cause and consequence. We have sought, however, to maintain as clear a distinction as possible between our theme and its urban relatives, the street and the city, each of which has its own characteristic history and iconography.7

Prokopoff’s statement offers clear, instrumental, distinctive information about automobiles, highways, and the roadside versus the street and the city. The road should be considered a different genre from the street that mainly depicts people and urban life.

Consider the study of the road as a genre in other media, such as road literature,

6 Stephen S. Prokopoff, “Foreword” in The Highway, 6. For the title of the dissertation, I prefer “road” to “highway” because highway is more specific than the road; the road also has a longer history and broader meaning in common usage. Every highway is a road, but not every road is a highway. The road also could refer to the roadside, driveways, side roads, and roadways. As the dissertation progresses, several relevant and more appropriate terms should be referenced, such as the highway, Interstate Highway, and freeway.

7 Stephen S. Prokopoff, “Foreword” in The Highway, 6. xxiii road music, and road movies; it appears that the road deserves a proper name and its place in the history of photography. In film studies, for example, the mating of the road and the movie also has an enduring history. Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, in The Road

Movie Book, stated:

The road has always been a persistent theme of American culture. Its significance, embedded in both popular mythology and social history, goes back to the nation’s frontier ethos, but was transformed by the technological intersection of motion pictures and the automobile in the twentieth century.8

By being represented in visual form, the conception, narrative, and aesthetic of the road discussed in film studies are instrumental in defining and establishing a genre study for road photography. The statement also suggests the connection between the frontier and the road experience in American visual culture.

Since the invention of the automobile, road trips have provided subject matter for photographers, in work ranging from the documentary tradition to fine art photography.

Modern life in America has been transformed by the special and intimate bonding

8 Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, “Introduction” in The Road Movie Book (New York: Routledge, 1997), 1. xxiv between the car and the camera.9 Since the 1930s, an increasing number of photographers have focused on the automobile and highway culture as the quintessential

American cultural and aesthetic experience.

The popularization of the automobile and the construction of the federal highway system10 paved the way for many Okies11 and other farmers to migrate from the Dust

Bowl area to California during the Great Depression. This pursuit of the American Dream was done mostly by automobile and along US Route 66 as depicted in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, 1939 and John Ford’s film adaptation of the book in 1940.

This critical social issue also was documented by Dorothea Lange, and became the focus of her photo-book, An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion, 1939.

Such prevalent American mythology of the road is intertwined with American history and material culture, as well as with the automobile and its adjacent industry.

Stirred by Ford’s Grapes of Wrath that implied alleged indictment of American capitalism

9 Gerald Silk, “Car Culture: The Automobile in Twentieth-Century Photography,” in Car Culture, ed. by Marla Hamburg Kennedy (New York: Howard Greenberg Gallery, 1998), iii.

10 The Federal Aid Road Act, enacted in 1916, was the first federal highway funding law. It was instrumental in extending and improving the country’s road system. A more influential impact came in 1956 with the National Interstate and Defense Highway Act during Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency.

11 Okie is a term to describe residents or natives of Oklahoma. A similar usage applies to people from the Arkansas, Arkie. During the Great Depression, many Okies moved from Oklahoma to California but encountered hostile responses due to limited opportunities. James N. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). xxv and the failure of the American Dream, the American Communist Party arranged to have it screened in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Russian viewers commented with astonishment that even the poorest Americans had cars, and the film was pulled from distribution.12

The fact that America’s homeland was spared from two World Wars should not be neglected, since after these wars Europe was in ruin, suffering from the devastation of its infrastructure and economy. Traveling across America also increases people’s identity with the country. The word “country” incorporates two notions together: the nation and its land. The rise of automobile tourism can be traced to the beginning of the 20th century as corroborated by numerous automobile clubs and automobile tour guides. For example,

Rand McNally, a publisher known for its maps, published a series of Photo-Auto Guide books, including one between New York and Chicago. The books included photographs of important intersections, bridges, and other landmarks, with arrows for motorists to identify and orient themselves during their trip, a pre-modern version of Google Street view and the simulation on a GPS device.13

12 Silk, “Car Culture: The Automobile in Twentieth-Century Photography,” in Car Culture, iv.

13 Rand McNally & Co. Photo-Auto Guide and Maps New York to Chicago, Chicago to New York (New York: Rand McNally & Co., 1910). Over several years of publications, the series also included trips between South Bend and Indianapolis; and Chicago and Milwaukee, among others. xxvi

In 1937, the American Automobile Association (AAA) also published a booklet,

Americans on the Highway: A Survey on the Trends of Tourist Travel, which chronicled and promoted the phenomenon of automobile travel in America.14 As Henry Ford Jr. stated: “lobbying for good roads was democracy in action,” a claim in his Ford Motor

Company 1951 advertisement: “The wheels move on endlessly, always moving, always forward…constantly heading toward finer tomorrow. The American Road is paved with hope.”15 In 1954, in resolving a road crisis and highway situation, President Dwight

Eisenhower also noted “What was good for the country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”16 In the 1960s, there was a time when one out of six Americans worked for an automobile related business.17

In her essay for the Museum of Modern Art 2009 exhibition, Into the Sunset:

Photography’s Image of the American West, curator Eva Respini argues that “the

14 American Automobile Association, Americans on the Highway: A Survey of the Trends of Tourist Travel (Washington, DC: American Automobile Association, 1937).

15 See Marilyn Laufer, In Search of America: Photography from the Road, 1936–1976, (Saint Louis, MO: Washington University, 1992), 152, 153, 170. For Ford’s 1951 advertisement, see Phil Patton, Open Road: A Celebration of the American Highway (New York: Simon Schuster, 1986), 188.

16 See Laufer, In Search of America: Photography from the Road, 1936–1976, 153.

17 David J. St. Clair, The Motorization of American Cities (New York; London: Praeger, 1986), 3. For the original statistics based on the study in 1963, see Automobile Facts and Figures, 1968 (Detroit: Automobile Manufacturers Association, 1968), 33. For fuller discussion, see John B. Rae, The Road and Car in American Life (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1971), 44–49, 101–108. xxvii development of the automobile has deeply affected how people experience the Western landscape.” She further mentions the key role of photography in “taming” the West.18 In examining photographic images of the American West from the 19th century to the present, Into the Sunset confirmed the influence of the imagery of the West as a myth and its interrelatedness with the subsequent theme of automobiles and highways. As the highway has altered and shaped the American way of life, both literally and metaphorically, it is unavoidable to re-encounter the aesthetic of the sublime and the ordinary that is revealed in photographs as part of the representation of the visual and material culture of the American highway.

The study of the road in the history of photography, therefore, operates as part of

“Odology,” a term coined by cultural geography and landscape scholar J. B. Jackson in his Discovering the Vernacular Landscape.19 Jackson offered a way of interpreting the valued aspect of American highway by naming the study of the road “Odology” based on the Greek hodos, meaning road or journey, as the odometer in the car measures how far one has traveled.

18 Eva Respini, “Discovers, Dreamers, and Drifters” in Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2009), 14, 18.

19 John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 21. xxviii

In the late 1960s, art historical scholarship began to focus on the communication between the highway and art. In 1967, Lawrence Alloway stated: “highway culture is the hardware and sociology generated by automotive transport and the road system. Highway culture is invisible because it’s taken for granted.”20 Alloway noticed the reference to highway culture in works by Edward Ruscha, Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wesselmann, and

Allan D’Arcangelo of that time.

A few years later, works by Ruscha, Oldenburg, Wesselmann, and D’Arcangelo were included in the exhibition, The Highway, giving highway-related art more formal institutional recognition.21 Among a great number of paintings, mixed media, and sculptures, the exhibition included pertinent photographs by the likes of Evans and Lange.

The exhibition also displayed one of the earliest photographic documentations of automobile travel in America, Toledo Car at the Grand Canyon, Grand View Point,

Arizona, 1902, suggesting how the tradition of auto travel and road trips operates in tandem with American history and photography.22

20 Lawrence Alloway, “Hi-Way Culture: Man at the Wheel” in Arts Magazine, 41 (February 1967): 28–33.

21 The Highway opened in Philadelphia and ran from January 14 to February 25, 1970. The show later traveled to the Institute for the Arts at Rice University in Houston, Texas, on view from March 12 to May 18; and subsequently to the Akron Art Institute in Akron, Ohio from June 5 to July 26. See The Highway, front matter.

22 For a more thorough discussion of this work, especially the connection between automobile travel and xxix

The scholarship on the highway sometimes overlaps with that on automobile culture and art. Gerald Silk edited Automobile and Culture for an exhibition at the

Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 1984.23 Silk provided pertinent examples by Edward Hopper, such as Jo in Wyoming, 1946 and Gas, 1940. The former is a perfect manifestation of the artist’s vision from the inside seat of a car, suggesting

Hopper’s unique rendering of a sense of narrative and cinematic qualities. Hopper depicted his wife Jo sitting in the front seat sketching the view, while both the highway and Western landscape are framed through the windshield in the background. In Gas, he recreates a sense of isolation and rootlessness, tendencies that travelers on the highway might feel.24 Hopper’s work is crucial for a comparative study on the photographs in the

1930s and inspirational for many subsequent photographers in the later decades.25

“taming the West,” see Chapter 4. [4-34]

23 Gerald Silk, ed. Automobile and Culture (New York: Abrams; Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984).

24 Gerald Silk, “The Automobile in Art” in Automobile and Culture, 106, 108. Hopper was not alone in depicting the scene with windshield, as Silk also provides other examples such as Stuart Davis’s Windshield Mirror, c.1932, and Henri Matisse’s Through the Windshield, 1917.

25 Discussion about Hopper and William Eggleston’s shared interest in the vernacular, quotidian, and disregarded can be found in Adam D. Winberg, “Preface” in William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961–2008 ed. by Elisabeth Sussman (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art; Munich: Haus der Kunst; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) xii–xiii. For shared qualities in Hopper and Stephen Shore’s works, see Christy Lange, “Survey, Nothing Overlooked” in Stephen Shore (London; New York: Phaidon Press, 2007) 81. For Hopper’s interpretation of America and how it inspired a younger generation’s attitudes toward their local surroundings and native environment, see William C. Seitz, São Paulo 9 United States of America (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1967). For Hopper’s influence on a series of photographers, see Edward Hopper, Edward Hopper & Company (San Francisco: xxx

Another important publication is the dissertation by Marilyn Laufer in 1992, In

Search of America: Photography from the Road, 1936–1976. In her dissertation, Laufer introduces four critical institutional factors that are substantial in defining the photographic search for America including governmental sponsorship of image-making; the art world; media; and the fellowship provided by the John Simon Guggenheim

Memorial Foundation.26 These factors are important to consider while contextualizing the development of road photography and an individual photographer’s working process.

In terms of governmental sponsorship, Evans and Lange both were affiliated with the Resettlement Administration/Farm Security Administration (RA/FSA) in the 1930s.

Evans had to photograph small towns and rural areas, and these places were accessible more easily by state and local highways. Roy Stryker, his supervisor, had to explain and legitimize his automobile travel for government approval and reimbursement of the expenses. Although taking the train might have seemed less expensive, Evans would need to request local cab service or rent a car, which would have been impractical as he carried cumbersome photographic equipment. (See Chapter 1)

Fraenkel Gallery, 2009).

26 Marilyn Laufer, In Search of America: Photography from the Road, 1936–1976, (PhD diss., Washington University in St. Louis, 1992), 12–15. xxxi

As to other financial support, in 1955, Robert Frank was the first European photographer to receive the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and he renewed the fellowship for the next year to complete his photographic road trip across America, mainly to travel back to the East Coast from California. This project became his monumental photo-book, The Americans, 1958/1959, a breakthrough in his career.

In contrast, when Edward Ruscha traveled from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City, where he had grown up, he completed the trip within 3 days along Route 66 for his photo project Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962. Ruscha was then a recent college graduate, and his book was self-published in a small-size format; therefore, his decision-making also involved economic concerns. This practical reason yields another dimension to the interpretation of the difference of Rucha’s casual snapshots of gas stations from those by

Evans and Frank.

For other photographers I discuss in my dissertation, Lee Friedlander was a

Guggenheim Fellowship recipient in 1960, 1962, and 1977. Stephen Shore received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in 1974 and a Guggenheim

Fellowship in 1975. Robert Adams also was a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient in 1973 and again in 1980. William Eggleston received his Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974 and

xxxii grants from the NEA in 1975 and 1978. Joel Sternfeld was a Guggenheim fellow in 1979 and an NEA grant recipient in 1980.27 Such fellowships and grants, both private and federal, were financially crucial for these photographers who traveled on the road extensively.

By examining the interrelatedness of the institutional factors, Laufer’s investigation is constructive for reviewing road photographs through their historical and cultural contexts, as well as their socio-economical and materialist perspectives. Laufer’s research also delineates highway imagery as a facet of American photography and as an expression of American culture. Nonetheless, Laufer sets the time frame along with the limitation of her dissertation, which does not address the photographic works after the mid-1970s, a period of reexamination and re-evaluation of the landscape and environment and the rise of color photography. My dissertation looks at key works made since the mid-1970s, demonstrating their importance within the history of road photography.28

27 For Friedlander, see the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation website, accessed April 4, 2017, http://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/lee-friedlander/ As to Adams, see Robert Adams, The Place We Live: A Retrospective Selection of Photographs 1964–2009 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013). For other photographers shooting in color, such as Shore, Eggleston, and Sternfeld, see Sally Eauclaire, The New Color Photography (New York: Abbeville Press, 1981), 255, 269, 273.

28 One of the limitations of Laufer’s dissertation is that she was not able to include two major movements in the history of photography in her research such as works by New Topographics photographers or works xxxiii

Apart from discussions by art historians, film scholars, such as Cohan and Hark, already suggested the frontiersmanship rooted in road movies.29 As such, the landscape depicted in road movies often resembles ones in Westerns through forms of open space and untamed environment. As part of the visual study of the American highway, it is not uncommon for road photography to share similar qualities with road movies in the representation of the roadside.

The fact that road movies share similar roots with Westerns also established links between road photography and landscape photography of the 19th century, especially for

Western and railroad images. Anne Lyden, in Railroad Vision: Photography, Travel, and

Perception, cites Douglas Nickel’s description of the railroad vision as “the semi-continuous, flattened, enframed but open-ended treatment of landscape.”30 In the section on “the Moving Landscape,” Lyden further discusses “the lure of railroad vision, with its tempting images of large, open landscapes and awe-inspiring vistas—of landscapes.”31 Such description of the railroad vision also could be applied to an

by Stephen Shore and William Eggleston that are shot in color at that time.

29 Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark eds., The Road Movie Book, (London; NY: Routledge, 1997), 1.

30 Anne M. Lyden, Railroad Vision: Photography, Travel, and Perception (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), 1.

31 Anne M Lyden, Railroad Vision: Photography, Travel, and Perception, 85. xxxiv understanding and perception of the road from the automobile.

The West is not only a geographical term but also a symbolic idea about the cultural significance with freedom, individualism, and heroism. It leads the way to an unknown or untamed frontier in order to let individuals fulfill the American value of self-reliance.32 In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner concluded that the civilization of the

American nation expanded westward, and that the frontier symbolized the boundary of the civilized world.33 As railroad travels became a crucial part of tourism in the 19th century, the related railroad photographs attracted travelers and tourists and mobilized the exploration and development supported by commercial corporations and governmental agencies. These railroad visions, therefore, could be considered as an object of art, memory, and economic value.34 Highway imagery also may bear a similar function and symbolic meanings, much like railroad visions establishing connections to nature and the wilderness.

Automobile travel is an important theme in the study of American literature, such

32 Sandra S. Phillips, Crossing the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing West, 1849 to the Present, (San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1996), 14.

33 Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” and “The West and American Ideals,” in The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1962).

34 Anne M. Lyden, Railroad Vision: Photography, Travel, and Perception, 7. xxxv as Kris Lackey’s RoadFrames: The American Highway Narrative35 and Ronald

Primeau’s Romance of the Road: The Literature of the American Highway.36 Lackey argues that auto travelers in the 20th century tended to take road trips as a symbolic gesture. The traveler often believes that driving somehow bestowed disinterested liberty, a temporary and privileged innocence of the forces that have made automobile and highways possible.37 Both Lackey and Primeau notice the picaresque as an analogous genre to the road. Primeau further asserts:

Americans have treated the highway as sacred space. Roads and cars have long gone beyond simple transportation to become places of exhilarating motion, speed, and solitude. Getting away is a chance at a new start, a special time to discover self and country, glide through vast empty spaces and then come home to write or sing about the adventures…the road journey is an epic quest, a pilgrimage, a romance, a ritual that helps explain where Americans have been and where they think they might be going. Accordingly, the art forms and cultural symbols that have developed express a mode of consciousness, a complex of values, a way of seeing the world.38

35 Lackey mentions several key terms related to the highway narrative, including picaresque, pastoral, chivalric, naturalism, and Transcendentalism. Kris Lackey, RoadFrames: The American Highway Narrative (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 8–9.

36 Primeau points out that the road as a genre may incorporate pilgrimage, quest romance, Bildungsroman, and the picaresque. Ronald Primeau, Romance of the Road: The Literature of the American Highway (OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1996), ix.

37 Lackey, RoadFrames: The American Highway Narrative, x–xi.

38 Primeau, Romance of the Road: The Literature of the American Highway, 1. xxxvi

Primeau’s account bolsters the legitimacy of the road as a genre in art and photography.

These claims and criteria for literature might also apply to visual arts, particularly photography, a more democratic and popular medium than painting, suggesting the drive for artists to take road trips and photographs.

In 2007, Yancey Richardson Gallery presented Easy Rider: Road Trips through

America, which not only affirmed the long tradition of road trips in American photography, but also explored the common themes of social commentary, cultural geography and photographic biography produced by the marriage between road trips and photography.39

More recently, in 2015, Aperture Foundation published The Open Road:

Photography and the American Road Trip. The book accompanied a traveling exhibition across America with stops at several venues.40 As a long-time foundation dedicated to the education and research of photography, this book and its traveling exhibition demonstrate the significance of the genre study in history of photography, providing a

39 See the press release for Easy Rider: Road Trips through America by Yancey Richardson Gallery, accessed April 7, 2017, http://prod-images.exhibit-e.com/www_yanceyrichardson_com/bf30a43a.pdf.

40 See David Campany, The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip (New York: Aperture, 2015). For the traveling schedule and venues of the exhibition, see Aperture’s website, accessed April 7, 2017, http://aperture.org/traveling-exhibitions/open-road/ xxxvii timely reference to the subject. Although David Campany’s essay “A Short History of the

Long Road” provides a comprehensible roadmap, covering the cultural contexts from the early 20th century to the present, the exhibition began with photographs by Frank selected from The Americans, concentrating on the development of the genre from the postwar era to the present.41

Considering the structure of the exhibition and its limitations, each artist is represented only by a limited number of images, providing unchartered territory for further exploration. One of the critical issues left understudied is a closer examination of the iconographic dialogues among works by various photographers, whether from the same decade or across different time periods. Unlike The Open Road as a survey, my dissertation attempts to connect the dots scattered in the field, and to present the evolution of American road photography, especially the thematic, stylistic, and aesthetic similarities and differences among works by the relevant photographers.

The Road Map

The layout of the chapters is based primarily on chronological order. Rather than

41 The exhibition, at least at its inaugurated venue at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, did include hard copies of Evans’s book American Photographs and Lange’s An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion. Museum Visit at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, February 27, 2016. xxxviii randomly discuss any picture with an automobile or highway scene, the dissertation focuses on the important photo-books and series that most significantly contribute to the development of the genre, as revealed in various themes such as empty highways, gas stations, billboards, parking lots, drive-in theaters, and other roadside services.

Chapter 1 investigates how photographs from the 1930s shaped the tradition of

American road photography by analyzing two RA/FSA affiliated photographers, Evans and Lange.42 Evans expressed his consistent interest in depicting automobile and roadside landscapes, while Lange followed and documented the life of highway migrants on the road from the Dust Bowl to California. The first half of the chapter reframes

Evans’s automobile landscapes from his American Photographs, 1938, by addressing multiple issues such as their formal qualities, sequential arrangement, and relationship to material culture and automobile history during the 1930s. The second half re-examines

42 Unlike Dorothea Lange, Evans spent only a short period of time working for the agency. His earliest photographs for the administration were dated from June, July and November of 1935. Jerald Maddox, Walker Evans: Photographs for the Farm Security Administration, 1935–1938 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1973), ix. In 1937, Roy Stryker of the Historical Division fired Evans from the unit. This was before the administration changed its name from RA to FSA under the Department of Agriculture. Jessica Lee May, Off the Clock: Walker Evans and the Crisis of American Capital 1933–38 (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2010), 5. Before Evans was fired, he had a temporary leave of absence to work with James Agee to document three tenant families in Hal County, Alabama for Fortune; this work later became Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenants Families (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1941). After this project, it is unclear when Evans rejoined the section. Evans’s last trip for the RA/FSA seemed to have been a trip to Arkansas and Tennessee to cover flood conditions with Edwin Locke in February 1937. Hank O’Neal, A Vision Shared: A Classic Portrait of America and its People, 1935–1943 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), 62. xxxix pertinent highway photographs in Lange’s An American Exodus: A Record of Human

Erosion, 1939. It includes a section on the cinematography of John Ford’s movie The

Grapes of Wrath, 1940, an adaptation of John Steinbeck 1939 novel. Both the film and the novel referenced the FSA duplicate files for visual accuracy, including Lange’s photographs.

This chapter provides a diverse view of the visual legacy of the 1930s. Evans was prolific during his short RA/FSA years. His primary focus was on being artistic instead of political. His approach was modernistic and formalistic.43 Lange’s Highway to the West,

1938, recalls the history of Manifest Destiny while exemplifying the iconic and classical empty highway scene through simple but compelling compositions of frontality and linearity.

Lange tried to produce “sociological photography,” not only providing photographs with sociological context and testimony recorded during the conversation

43 Evans and Lange both strongly displayed their style and beliefs in their photographs. The relationship between Roy Stryker and Evans in the end was not a happy one, worse than the one between Stryker and Lange. Stryker became increasingly impatient with Evans because of his small production, general disinterest in photographs to fill the file, and lack of understanding or interest in the bureaucratic problems in Washington DC. Many years later, Evans recalled: “Stryker did not understand that a photograph might be something more than just an item to file away. He missed the point of the eye…Stryker did not have any idea what an artist was and it was unfortunate that he had one like me around. I was excessively independent by temperament and had a hard time with him because of this. Stryker was shrewd enough to make use of the talent I had, but were born to clash.” Hank O’Neal, A Vision Shared: A Classic Portrait of America and its People, 1935–1943 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), 61. xl with the migrants, but also believing photography could have a social purpose. Evans was more interested in exploring the world during his road trips as an artist, whereas Lange was more concerned with portraying the lives of other people on the road. Moreover, several photographers discussed in the dissertation, such as Frank, Friedlander, and Shore, were influenced greatly by Evans regarding photographic styles and themes of automobile landscapes.44

Chapter 2 re-examines Robert Frank’s road photographs from The Americans,

1958/1959. My discussion first centers on the ways in which Frank responded to the existing conventions of documenting the American automobile, highway, and roadside landscapes, particularly the visual legacies established by Evans and Lange. Unlike

Evans, who mainly visited the eastern and southern states, or Lange, who focused on the southwestern region and California in the 1930s, Frank conducted a series of road trips encompassing the entire United States. By examining Frank’s photographs and comparing them with photographs by Evans and Lange, the formal and contextual

44 For Evans’s influence on Frank, see Tod Papageorge, Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An Essay on Influence (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1981). Friedlander synthesized Frank’s snapshot aesthetic with Evans’s formalist style with pre-visualized compositions. Shore emulated Frank’s cross-country road trip as a means to fully explore America in his first road trip series, American Surfaces, 1973, with a snapshot approach. For his second series, Uncommon Places, 1982, Shore reenacted the analytical viewing exemplified by Evans by switching from 35 mm camera ultimately to a large 8-by-10 view camera. xli connections and differences between the photographs in these two decades, the 1930s and the 1950s, become evident. My further analysis of many automobile and highway related images from The Americans explores and explains how Frank documented and defined postwar American society during his road trips. This chapter verifies that road photography continues and transforms as a genre by representing corresponding themes and contemporary social issues, and both stylistic and historical changes. Unlike Evans, who usually used a large 8-by-10 view camera, Frank utilized a 35 mm camera and epitomized the snapshot aesthetic with more spontaneity. Frank also consciously contrasted the pleasures and perils of the open road—jukeboxes, drive-in theaters, highway accidents, and funerals and roadside crosses—to express skepticism and criticism about American life.

Chapter 3 compares photographic practices by two photographers, Ruscha and

Friedlander, both closely associated with traveling on the road. Especially noteworthy are

Ruscha’s notable photographic series in the 1960s, such as Twentysix Gasoline Stations,

1962, and Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966, and Royal Road Test, 1967. The chapter also looks at Friedlander’s miscellaneous photographs from the 1960s to the early

1970s, including some images from The Little Screens, 1962 and The American

xlii

Monument, 1976.45 Ruscha’s series embodies Pop art and Conceptualist affinity, whereas

Friedlander’s work exemplifies snapshot yet sophisticated formalist style. Ruscha and

Friedlander both were indebted to the earlier tradition of Evans and Frank who had photographed America on the road. Although Ruscha and Friedlander shared the historical context of the art world and counter culture in the 1960s, they manifested different approaches and attitudes toward photography. Ruscha did not identify himself as a serious photographer and manifested the Pop art and Conceptualist affinity in his work, treating the medium only for documentary purpose. By contrast, Friedlander actively responded to the medium’s history and engagingly synthesized Frank’s snapshot aesthetic and Evans’s sophisticated formalist style.

Two of the most important trends in photography in the 1970s were exemplified in the exhibition, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, held at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York in 1975 and in the rise of color photography. Chapter 4 concentrates on Shore’s photographs from two of his road trip series, American Surfaces, 1972/2005 and Uncommon Places, 1982/2004 because Shore

45 Many images from The Little Screens were shot in the motel or hotel lodgings during Friedlander’s road trip. Although the focus of The American Monument is about documenting the memorials and monuments, Friedlander had to travel on the road extensively to fulfill his mission. xliii was involved with both developments as the only photographer shooting in color in the

New Topographics. To demonstrate that Shore was the most representative “road photographer” in this period, especially for re-enacting the styles and legacies of Evans and Frank, I also compare his work with photographs by his contemporaries, such as

Robert Adams, William Eggleston, and Joel Sternfeld. This reintroduces some major developments that intersect with road photography in the 1970s and 1980s. The shared interests between Shore and these photographers include the transformation of the

American landscape, as evidenced in the photographs of New Topographics, such as

Adams’s images; photographing in color, which yet was to be recognized for its artistic value in fine art photography, such as Eggleston’s work; and photographing with a large

8-by-10 view camera to provide more analytical observation as previously exemplified by Evans but now in color during a cross-country road trip, such as Sternfeld’s series.46

Chapter 5 revisits photographic representations of how artists reconsidered driving and roadscapes from 1990 to the present. These include Catherine Opie’s

Freeways, 1994–1995; Andrew Bush’s Vector Portraits, 1989–1997; Martha Rosler’s

46 In 1985, Lewis Baltz, one of photographers in the New Topographics, identified color photography and the New Topographics as the two photographic trends of the 1970s. As to color photography, Baltz recognized the work of Eggleston and Shore. See Kevin Moore, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970–1980 (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010), 10. See original quote, Lewis Baltz, “American Photography in the 1970s” in American Images: Photography 1945–1980 (London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1985), 163. xliv

Rights of Passage, 1997; Lee Friedlander’s America by Car, 2010; and Amy Stein’s

Stranded, 2010. These series mostly tend to deal with the Interstate Highways, expressways, and freeways, rather than smaller roads, signaling the deeply interwoven relationship between the super highway and contemporary life and travel in America.

These highways reshaped the American landscape along with the habits and movements of American people.

Drawn from the frequent commuting and traffic on the freeways, Opie’s series of photographs provides eerie, sublime, yet nostalgic, views of enormous freeways in small panoramic platinum prints that particularly structure the life and landscape of Los

Angeles. Opie has compared her Freeways with Maxime Du Camp’s pictures of the

Egyptian pyramids published in 1852. Similar to the pyramids, highways have an inherent grandeur and stateliness because of their scale; Opie often photographed from a terrestrial position to emphasize the aerial arrangements overhead. As freeways were spectacles, ruins, and monuments for Opie, Bush turned his focus on the drivers in and around Los Angeles, providing a complete portrait of a driving society. Bush’s series raises the concern of the private room in public space as the artist photographed a person’s car next to his on the freeway. In the meantime, the series not only recalls the

xlv sense of anonymity of Evans’s portraits of subway passengers taken by a hidden camera, but also Ruscha’s Conceptualist and scientific approach in the 1960s.

Shifting from the West Coast to the East, Rosler sought to rethink the metaphor of the American road as a promise of all good things. In her work, the viewer suffers from auto-phobia, and driving seems to be a nightmare rather than a reflection of the American

Dream of mobility.47 Driving in the New York Metropolitan area, she constantly encountered traffic, construction, detours, and a plethora of visual information provided by signs and billboards, as well as messages of consumption and the transportation of goods. Also using small panoramic prints, however, in color and shot from the inside of the car, her photographs present alienation and sometimes the ironic situation of driving in and out of a modern city. Rosler’s work suggests freeway revolts and the curse of mobility.

As Opie, Bush, and Rosler documented driving and roadscapes on a regional basis, Friedlander and Stein photographed road scenes during cross-country road trips.

Continuing to crisscross the country extensively starting from the late 1990s, Friedlander

47 I borrow the term “auto-phobia” from Brian Ladd’s reconsideration of the social and even psychological impact of automobiles to the ordinary life and landscape, see Brian Ladd, Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). xlvi created a series of photographs that incorporated the driving vision from the inside seat of a car. The photographs correlate the common visual experience of being on the road and the cinematography of road movies. His idiosyncratic inclusion of the side-view mirror, reflections, and self-presence is a consistent theme throughout his career, embodying a multilayered sense of time and place: the past, present, and future.

While Friedlander carried on the tradition of exploring the world on the road established by Evans and Frank, Stein revived this tradition in a fashion more closely related to Lange’s legacy. She documented the travels and hardships of being on the road.

Stein’s series reflects on the state of being stuck and left behind on the road, which literally and metaphorically refers to a journey interrupted, or even a failure of freedom and happiness, offering actual examples contrary to the assumption of “the American road is paved with hope.”48

Finally, as Edward Weston’s argued: “Photography as a creative expression—or what you will— must be seeing plus.” His description reminds us that photography is rhetorical, and photographers use a range of mechanisms to emphasize their observation, such as the composition, the exposure time or the timing to release the shutter, and

48 Laufer, In Search of America: Photography from the Road, 1936–1976, 170. For original quote, see Phil Patton, Open Road: A Celebration of the American Highway (New York: Simon Schuster, 1986), 188. xlvii viewpoint, among others.49 As Weston indicated, photography is a deployment of aesthetic and photographic codes reflecting decisions taken by the photographer. Wells argues that “Photographers look at and note what they see, and in doing so comment on what there is to be viewed, and by extension, offer a response to external phenomena.”50

Therefore, we must be “seeing plus” about the metaphorical, contextual, and aesthetic messages within and beyond the frame of road photography.

49 Wells, Land Matters, 8–9.

50 Ibid. xlviii

1

CHAPTER 1

THE VISUAL LEGACIES OF THE 1930S:

WALKER EVANS AND DOROTHEA LANGE

In this chapter, I investigate how photographs from the 1930s shaped the tradition of American road photography by analyzing two Resettlement

Administration/Farm Security Administration (RA/FSA) affiliated photographers, Walker

Evans and Dorothea Lange.1 Evans expressed his consistent interest in depicting automobile and roadside landscapes mainly on the East Coast and in the Deep South, while Lange followed and documented the life of highway migrants on the road from the

Dust Bowl to California and was the only RA/FSA photographer working on the West

1 Unlike Dorothea Lange, Evans spent a short period of time working for the agency. His earliest photographs for the administration were dated from June, July and November of 1935. Jerald Maddox, Walker Evans: Photographs for the Farm Security Administration, 1935–1938 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1973), ix. In 1937, Roy Stryker of the Historical Division fired Evans from the unit. This was before the administration changed its name from RA to FSA under the Department of Agriculture. Jessica Lee May, Off the Clock: Walker Evans and the Crisis of American Capital 1933–38 (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2010), 5. Before Evans was fired, he had a temporary leave of absence to work with James Agee to document three tenant families in Hal County, Alabama for Fortune; this work later became Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenants Families (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1941). After this project, it is unclear when Evans rejoined the section. Evans’s last trip for the RA/FSA seemed to have been a trip to Arkansas and Tennessee to cover flood conditions with Edwin Locke in February 1937. Hank O’Neal, A Vision Shared: A Classic Portrait of America and its People, 1935–1943 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), 62. Although Evans was the first photographer Stryker let go due to his independence and resistance to government bureaucracy, he was one of the first photographers Stryker hired. Stryker also was informed and influenced by Evans. See Miles Orvell, “‘A Very Living Document of Our Age:’ Constructing and Deconstructing the FSA Archive,” in The Bitter Years: Edward Steichen and the Farm Security Administration Photographs ed. Françoise Poos (New York: D.A.P., 2012), 31. 2

Coast. By the time they both began to photograph, automobiles and highways already had started to transform American life and landscapes.

I selected Evans because he was a major influence on almost all of the other

RA/FSA photographers, and Lange because she was the only one whose work was not shaped by Evans.2 Evans and Lange embodied two different attitudes and approaches to photography. They were hired by RA/FSA in its early years, and were important in shaping the agency’s visual legacy. Both geographically and stylistically, this chapter, therefore, provides a diverse view of the visual legacy of photographing automobiles and the roadside, as well as the migrants and their connection to the highway in the 1930s.

I first examine how Evans developed depictions of automobiles and roadside facilities as prevalent scenes of the 1930s. They were important photographic themes in his American Photographs, a photo book based on a selection of works from his solo exhibition of the same title held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1938. Although Evans had had his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1933, Walker Evans:

2 Evans was the only artist on Stryker’s staff, who provided flawless photographs and an intellectual approach to photography. Arthur Rothstein was a fresh and impressionable college graduate, Ben Shahn was nice enough to give his negatives to the file, and Jung was trying to find his own way. One of the reasons that Lange was excluded in the circle is that she was working on the West Coast and far from Washington D.C. By the time Lange worked for the RA/FSA, she had already established her own photographic agenda and style. See O’Neal, A Vision Shared: A Classic Portrait of America and its People, 1935–1943, 62. Also Penelope Dixon, Photographers of the Farm Security Administration: An Annotated Bibliography, 1930–1980 (New York: Garland, 1983), 18. 3

Photographs of Nineteenth Century Houses, the 1938 American Photographs showcased the best of his photography since 1928 and was important in defining his artistic career.3

In September 1938, Edward Weston wrote a letter to Beaumont Newhall at the

Museum of Modern Art, requesting a copy of American Photographs. Weston noted: “He is certainly one of our finest. When I see a photograph reproduced that I like, I usually find it is by Walker Evans.”4 Alan Trachtenberg argued that the 1938 exhibition

“established Evans in his mode, literally installed him within a place, settled the issue of who he was. It was the opening event of a career.”5 In an interview conducted by Paul

Cummings for the Archives of American Art in 1971, Evans commented: “The book particularly was a passport for me. Sure. It established my style and everything. Oh, yes.

And as time went on it became more and more important.”6

3 Evans was able to demonstrate what he had accomplished in regard to the earlier documentary tradition, tackling the problem of time. He already admired Eugene Atget’s work for its poetic dimension. For Evans, the image seeks to transcended time, unlike Edward Weston a transcended object. Giles Mora, Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1993), 133.

4 Newhall was a librarian at that time, who just mounted a survey exhibition on the history of photography in 1937 and later was appointed as the first curator of photography at the museum in 1940. For the quote of Weston’s letter to Newhall, see Peter Galassi, Walker Evans & Company (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2000), 26. For the original source, Edward Weston, letter to Beaumont Newhall, September 23, 1938, see the files of Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

5 Alan Trachtenberg, “A Book Nearly Anonymous” in Reading American Photographs, Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), 238.

6 Ibid. Also see the original source, Oral History Interview with Walker Evans, 1971 Oct. 13–Dec. 23, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, accessed April 3, 2015. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-walker-evans-11721 4

The exhibition included 100 photographs, and the book contained 87 images, 54 of which were part of the exhibition.7 The book undoubtedly was more influential than the exhibit in terms of its readership, the market, and its impact on many photographers in the following decades.8 Nearly half of the photographs that appeared in the book—19 out of 50 for the first part and 18 out of 37 for the second part—were taken during the time Evans worked for the RA/FSA. To Evans, the RA/FSA was a godsend and very rewarding, as he stated: “A subsidized freedom to do my stuff! ... That whole hot year I was tremendously productive. I developed my eyes, my feelings, about this country.”9

To this end, I will reconstruct the social context of the 1930s, especially aspects of material culture. I also will retrace Evans’s affiliation with the RA/FSA as he established his style of image making during this period. Evans was a pioneer of many

7 May, Off the Clock: Walker Evans and the Crisis of American Capital 1933-38, 147. In her appendix, May lists all the photographs on display and retraces its order in the exhibition by looking at installation shots of hang attributed to Evans. Original source can be found in the Walker Evans Archive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In her Chapter 3, May also reexamines the exhibition of American Photographs.

8 Walker Evans knew that “an ephemeral exhibition might attract hundreds of viewers, while a book would have an extended life reaching thousands.” John T. Hill, Walker Evans: Lyric Documentary (Göttingen: Steidl, 2006), 30. Also, Hill pointed out that since Evans installed his photographs in various ways: “some prints properly framed with mats and glass, others were frameless with only mats; still others were simply mounted on boards, cut flush to the image edge, and glued directly to the wall.” Therefore, the book became the primary vehicle, and perhaps a better representation of Evans’s work. John T. Hill, “American Photographs: Legacy of Seeing” in American Photographs (New York.: Errata Editions, 2011) unpaged.

9 Paul Cummings, Artists in Their Own Words (New York:, St. Martin’s Press, 1979), 91. Also, Galassi, Walker Evans & Company, 24. 5

automobile and highway related themes, such as the representations of roadside vendors, auto garages, and gas stations; many not only chronicled a common American visual experience but also became models for later photographers.10 I will review how Evans’s work encapsulated these roadside subjects and rendered their symbolic meanings through his formalistic approach. Evans established the American tradition of portraying cars in residential and rural settings, as well as on “Main Street,” suggesting the transformation of the vernacular landscape at that time due to the mass production of the automobile and

10 Evans was obviously familiar with Eugene Atget’s work as he wrote in his 1931 book review and essay “The Reappearance of Photography” for the literary journal, Hound and Horn, in which he appraised Atget’s photographs. Atget’s style was influential in shaping Evans’s own. John T. Hill also mentions a list of artists in all fields that pay homage to Evans’s American Photographs, including an entire school of German photography, beginning with the photography and teaching of Hilla and Bernd Becher. Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, and Garry Winogrand are obvious disciples as well. Hill, “American Photographs: Legacy of Seeing” in American Photographs, unpaged. There is also a close resemblance in terms of formal construction between the first picture in American Photographs and the first image in Atget’s Photographe de Paris (1930), both showing the facades of buildings with open doorways leading into darkened space. See Jeffrey Ladd “Making American Photographs” in American Photographs (New York: Errata Editions, 2011) unpaged. Noticeably, among his famous visual representations of Paris, Atget photographed Cour, 7 Rue de Valence in 1922, in which he portrayed the Renault touring car in front of an auto garage occupying the homely decaying courtyard. John Szarkowski, The Work of Atget (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1985) Vol. 4, 158. Evans was very knowledgeable on the history of photography, and Atget was his primary model. Michael Brix, “Walker Evans’s Photographs 1928-1938” in Walker Evans, America (New York: Rizzoli, 1991), 19. In Walker Evans& Company, curator Peter Galassi argued that Evans helped to initiate the modern art of descriptive photography. One of the goals of the exhibition and in Evans scholarship, was to reexamine the notion of the tradition that Evans has been associated with: how Evans inspired later photographers, as well as how he shared common ground with his contemporaries. Galassi, Walker Evans & Company, 7–8. For Evans’s influence on Robert Frank in particular, see Tod Papageorge, Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An Essay on Influence (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1981). In the following chapters of my dissertation, I will further argue and exemplify how Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, and Stephen Shore were indebted crucially to Evans’s style and content in terms of the depiction of automobile travels, highways, and the roadside. Lastly, another influence by Evans can be found in Raymond Smith’s photographic road trip in the summer of 1974. Smith was introduced to Evans by Alan Trachtenberg, and then got permission to participate in the seminar offered by Evans at Yale in 1971–72. See Richard H. King, “Mirror with a Memory—Raymond Smith’s In Time We Shall Know Ourselves” in In Time We Shall Know Ourselves (Madison, CT: Peter Hastings Falk, Fine Art Research & Publishing, 2014) unpaged. 6

the construction of the highway.

In the second part of the chapter, I will focus on Lange’s photographs, primarily the ones used in her photo-essay book, An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion, published in 1939.11 An American Exodus was compiled with Lange’s photographs, Paul

Schuster Taylor’s texts based on social and economic perspectives, and testimony from the highway migrants they encountered. Most of the photographs that appeared in the book were taken by Lange during her years at the RA/FSA. I will reconstruct the social and historical context of the westward migration through Lange’s lens, as well as examine her humanistic concern and critical points of view in her work. More importantly, I will explore how her works reiterate the visual and historical connotation of the past, Manifest Destiny, and how her classical frame of an empty highway was significant in the development of American road photography, becoming an iconic visual legacy to the American people in general and photographers in particular.

In the last section, I will compare Lange’s photographs with John Ford’s film

11 Evans published his American Photographs, 1938 in a book form is in part inspired by August Sander’s Face of Our Time/Antlitz der Zeit, 1929 and Atget’s Photographe de Paris, 1930. In the late 1930s until the early 1940s, along with Taylor and Lange’s 1939 photo-book An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion, a new book genre of photojournalist and documentary photography appeared in America, such as Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White’s You Have Seen Their Faces, 1937, Richard Wright’s Twelve Million Black Voices, 1941, and James Agee and Walker Evans’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1941. See Miles Orvell, John Vachon’s America: Photographs and Letters from the Depression to World War II (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 4. 7

adaption of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck became aware of the migrants, known as Okies, as they poured into the agricultural areas surrounding his home in Northern California. He believed that the Great Depression had exposed the hollowness of the American Dream of individualism and material success.12 In this section, I aim to provide a comparative visual analysis between Lange’s pictures and

Ford’s cinematography to discover the similarities and differences between them, and a comparison between documenting and visualizing the issues of migrant workers, especially their experience of traveling on the road.

A Nation on Wheels

In 1919, the U.S. War Department wanted to know if the country’s road system was sufficient to provide access for motorized army units traveling across the nation. The

Transcontinental Motor Convoy, including 81 Army vehicles and 280 officers and personnel, journeyed from Washington D.C. to San Francisco, California. The 3,251 miles took them 62 days. The convoy travelled only 58 miles a day at an average speed of

6 miles per hour. The convoy slid off embankments and became entrapped in mud from

12 Mark Carnes, Past Imperfect: History according to the Movies (New York: H. Holt, 1995), 224. 8

time to time. Engineers had to build and repair bridges, and rescue trucks crashed through inadequate wooden bridges built to accommodate horse and wagon traffic. One of the observers on the convoy, the 28-year-old Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower, concluded:

“both the roads and trucks needed improvement.” He also reported: “Extended trips through the U.S. are impractical until roads improved.”13 During the Depression of the

1930s, relief and recovery funds accounted for nearly 80 percent of all federal expenditures on roads.14

In 1920, there were 8,132,000 passenger cars registered in the United States.15

By 1930, there were already 26,700,000 automobiles in America, that is to say, one for every 4.5 people.16 The sweeping car ownership by all classes of people changed many aspects of American life more rapidly and profoundly than the railroad had done in the

13 Janet Davidson, On the Move: Transportation and the American Story (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2003), 116–118. Also the label text and short documentary of the long-term exhibition America on the Move at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Archival materials “America on the Move” at National Archives, accessed April 14, 2015. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/eyewitness/html.php?section=24

14 In 1916, the Federal Aid Road Act placed $75 million in the hands of the Secretary of Agriculture to invest in the improvement of rural roads over the next five years. By the terms of the Federal Highway Act of 1921, every state was required to designate 7% of its road as primary highways for federal matching grants. A 200,000-mile system of two-lane, numbered interstate highways was designed to connect every city with over fifty thousand residents. John A. Jackle, The Tourist: Travel in Twentieth-Century North America (Lincoln, NE: The University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 125–126.

15 Frank Donovan, Wheels for A Nation (New York: Crowell, 1965), 158.

16 David Campany, “A Short History of the Long Road,” in The Open Road: Photography & the American Road Trip (New York: Aperture, 2014), 8. 9

previous century.17 Whether it was the automobile and automobile landscape depicted through Evans’s travels in the East and the Deep South of America, or Dorothea Lange’s photographs and John Ford’s film on the social issue of the migrant traveling westward to

California on the highways, even the Depression could not loosen the relationship between Americans and their cars.

An automobile was a vehicle of freedom; however, it became a necessity as well.

Automotive statistics chart the dependence on car travel. Despite the 75% decline of new car sales from 4.5 to 1.1 million, between 1929 (the onset of the Great Depression) and

1932, car registrations only decreased by 10%, from 23 to 20.7 million during the same period.18 In other words, rather than buying new cars, people tended to purchase used cars and were reluctant to give up car ownership. Although the country still suffered from the Depression after 1933, both sales and ownership began to rise sharply. Annual car sales rose to 3.7 million by 1940, and car registrations increased to a new apogee of 29.6 million in 1941.19

17 Donovan, Wheels for A Nation, 160.

18 Joseph Interrante, “The Road to Autopia: The Automobile and the Spatial Transformation of American Culture” in The Automobile and American Culture, ed. David L. Lewis and Laurence Goldstein (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983), 100–101.

19 Ibid., 101. 10

In 1934, Fortune magazine commissioned James Agee to write an article on the commercial implications of the automobile in America, “The Great American

Roadside.”20 Agee argued that the American continent, the American people, the automobile, the great American road, and the great American roadside are key characters in our history. In order to understand the American roadside, Agee suggested that we must “see it as a vital and inseparable part of the whole organism, the ultimate expression of the conspiracy that produced it.”21 Fortune also included a large illustrated road map marking the important routes and trails, national parks, as well as the climate and the

20 One of Evans’s photographs of the roadside cabin is used in this article. Agee and Evans went South on assignment for Fortune to document the lives of sharecroppers later in the summer of 1936. They lived with three families for one month. Although Fortune never published the materials, the texts and photographs then became Let Us Now Praise the Famous Man: Three Tenants Families. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1941) In the original edition, 31 photographs by Evans were grouped preceding Agee’s text. Stryker also included all the photographs Evans took during this trip in the RA/FSA files. See Dixon, Photographers of the Farm Security Administration: An Annotated Bibliography 1930–1980, 17–18. In 1945, Evans went to Fortune, where he worked as an editor of photography for twenty years and produced 28 photo-essays. Evans conceived of the portfolio, executed the photographs, designed the page layouts, and wrote the accompanying texts. See also Department of Photographs. "Walker Evans (1903–1975)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/evan/hd_evan.htm (October 2004) Accessed March 5, 2015. Although the Museum of Modern Art in New York held the first one-person photography exhibition for Evans in 1938, suggesting photography’s emerging status as modern art, some photographers still rely on magazines to show their work for the mass circulation. Photographers and photo editors also became more important as magazines began to include more photographs for the their coverage and articles.

21 “The Great American Roadside,” Fortune, September 1934. In 1930, Fortune was created as a coffee table magazine for the wealthy class. Fortune became liberal in the mid-1930s as a compromise between the conservative Henry Luce and the radical writers. See Michael Augspurger, An Economy of Abundant Beauty: Fortune Magazine and Depression America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 2. http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1990/12/17/74445/index.htm. Accessed January 25, 2015. 11

suggested season to visit each region.22 In the fifth year of the Great Depression, Agee observed that the roadside, where people stopped to trade and consume, became “a young but great industry” with a “most hugely extensive market.”23 Automobile and roadside business certainly benefitted the nation economically and became a setting and theme greatly intertwined with American life.

Also in 1934, while Agee’s assessment of the “road business” was on the newsstands, in his movie It Happened One Night, a comedy set largely in the new auto camps, Frank Capra created an early model for the “road movie,” cinematically codifying the automobile and highway culture in North America.24 In the film, a runaway heiress tried to escape from her father by taking a bus from Florida to New York, where she planned to meet her husband. During the three-day journey, she meets a wily newspaper journalist, and they finally fall in love as they travel from camp to camp across the country. The first and foremost part of story took place on a Greyhound bus, at bus terminals, and in auto-camps, as the bus was stranded. For lack of money, they are forced

22 John Steuart Curry, “The Great American Roadside” featured in Fortune magazine, September 1934, 58–59. Also see David Campany, “A Shore History of the Long Road,” in The Open Road: Photography & the Americans Road Trip (New York: Aperture, 2014), 12.

23 Campany, “A Short History of the Long Road,” in The Open Road: Photography & the American Road Trip, 11.

24 Ibid., 11–13. 12

to spend the first night in the same motel room.25 Later in the journey, the travel also includes scenes of hitchhiking and driving a Model T Ford.

Both Agee and Capra emphasized the automobile cabin camp, popular in the

1920s and 1930s, in their work. These camps served as a transition between an auto campground and a luxury motel. Although hotels in cities and towns still dominated the lodging industry at that time, most hotels were oriented geographically to railroads and public transit, and few were convenient for automobile travelers. Most importantly, motels were cheaper than hotels, and this was crucial for most Americans during the

Depression years.26

Throughout the 1920s, as automobile ownership increased, driving was primarily a leisure-time activity. By the 1930s, automobiles had replaced trains as the most common method of travel in America. For instance, in 1935, 85% of the vacationers

25 Linda Mizejewski, It Happened One Night (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 4. The bus driver was wearing a uniform with a Greyhound patch on his arm. The Greyhound logo also can be found on the bus and a sign suggesting the spelling of Greyhound is found at the terminal as well. By depicting traveling by bus, Capra visualized a means of transportation different from driving a car. This traveling experience might be more affordable for those who did not own or drive a car during the Depression years. Frank Capra, It Happened One Night (Culver City, California: Columbia TriStar Home Video, 1999). Mordaunt Hall "It Happened One Night (1934): NYT Critics' Pick," accessed March 18, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/movies/movie/25509/It-Happened-One-Night/overview

26 Davidson, On the Move: Transportation and the American Story, 186. John A. Jakle, The Tourist: Travel in Twentieth-Century North America (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 163–166. The first record of a cabin camp opening was in Douglas, Arizona, in 1913. It was not until the early 1920s that the idea was carried out in the West, and later spread east. Motel patrons parked adjacent to their rooms so that it was easier to load and unload their town cars, and avoided the tipping to the luggage service at the hotel. 13

went by car.27 Although traveling by train sometimes cost less, Americans seemed willing to pay for the convenience and independence of traveling in their own vehicle.

While railroad traffic declined during the 1920s and 1930s, auto travel increased six fold.28 Since highways gradually became movers of people and goods, traffic attracted business to the roadsides. Thus, gas stations, roadside restaurants, and auto-camps, as well as billboards represented a new kind of landscape.29

Automobiles and the Roadside in American Photographs

Although in some cases, traveling by common carrier, such as train or bus might have appeared cheaper than traveling by car, Roy Stryker, the Chief of RA/FSA

Historical Section and Evans’s supervisor, wrote to the Division of Finance for travel reimbursement for Evans and justified the reason that Evans had to travel by automobile from Washington, D.C. to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Stryker wrote: “It is necessary for a photographer to carry a great deal of equipment when going on a field trip — an amount of equipment which makes it practically impossible to travel by bus or street-car, and

27 Davidson, On the Move: Transportation and the American Story, 186.

28 Ibid.

29 Jakle, The Tourist: Travel in Twentieth-Century North America, 120. 14

makes a car almost a necessity.” 30 It is obvious that Evans needed a car so that he could travel through the countryside more easily and more freely to get a broader picture of his subject matter. Stryker stated that if Evans traveled by train, which would have cost a few cents less, he would then have needed to hire a taxicab or rental car in order to reach his desired locations. In that case, it would have involved much more expense than driving

Evans’s own car. Stryker also claimed that if the photographer were limited to taking photographs only at places accessible by common carrier, the project would be curtailed greatly and the results would have been unsatisfactory.

Walker Evans’s American Photographs contained several significant images related to automobile and roadside culture that document American streets, people, architecture, and the way of living during the 1930s. While Evans’s emphasis was on people and architecture he also expressed interest in several automobile or roadside related themes. In the afterword in Evans’s American Photographs, Lincoln Kirstein explained, “The physiognomy of a nation is laid on your table,”31 as scenes of

30 Roy Emerson Stryker, “Travel Reimbursement Account of Walker Evans,” January 31, 1936. Correspondence of Roy Stryker with the following people: John Collier, Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Edwin Locke, Arthur Rothstein, John Vachon, 1935–43. Roy Emerson Stryker Papers, Archives of American Art. Microfilm reel, NDA 25.

31 Lincoln Kirstein, “Photographs of America: Walker Evans,” in American Photographs (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2012), 200. 15

automobiles indicate their significant roles in portraying a nation.

In the winter of 1934 in an unfinished letter, Evans wrote to Ernestine Evans (no relation):

An American City is best…I know more about such a place. People, all classes, surrounded by bunches of the new down and out. Automobiles and the automobile landscape. Architecture, American urban taste, commerce, small scale, large scale, the city street atmosphere, the street smell, the hateful stuff, women’s clubs, fake culture, bad education, religion in decay. The movies. Evidence of what the people of the city read, eat, see for amusement, do for relaxation and not get it. Sex. Advertising. A lot else, you see what I mean.32

Walker Evans’s letter records his interest in automobiles and automobile landscape as themes to photograph his journey. Evans then joined the RA/FSA project because he was allowed to shoot subjects that he already had planned to pursue.33 His idea of what he wanted to document through photography soon impressed Stryker, and Stryker even prepared shooting scripts for all the RA/FSA photographers that resembled the letter

32 Jerry L. Thompson, Walker Evans at Work: 745 Photographs Together with Documents Selected from Letters, Memoranda, Interviews, Notes (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 98. Ernestine Evans was an established editor and avid cheerleader for Evans and his work. Ernestine helped Walker Evans to get his first solid assignment, the project of Crime of Cuba. The list in the letter contains clues to the seminal work Walker Evans did for the RA/FSA in the following years. John T. Hill, “American Photographs: Legacy of Seeing” in American Photographs, not paginated.

33 Although Evans showed insistence on independence and was disdainful of bureaucracy and bureaucrats, it was important for him to get on the road and take the pictures he wanted with all expenses paid by the government. Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans, 245. 16

Evans wrote to Ernestine Evans.

In a letter to all photographers in 1939, Stryker listed pictures needed for the

RA/FSA files, and “The Highway” was one of the categories. Stryker described exactly what he wanted in detail: “Pictures which emphasize the fact that the American highway is very often a more attractive place than the places American live.”34 During the formulation of the RA/FSA, Rexford G. Tugwell, the first director, had suggested that the project “introduce Americans to America.”35 Stryker and his staff had believed that this pedagogical role through visual documentation in well-constructed formats would acquaint Americans with their land and their people, and the automobile and automobile landscapes inevitably were recognized as important themes.

As Peter Galassi noticed, the first picture in American Photographs is related not only to the theme of photographs but also to the theme of automobiles. It shows a driver’s license photo-studio.36 Furthermore, the representations of the car culture in plates 7 to

10 in American Photographs also are a recapitulation of the theme of picture-taking, an

34 Marilyn Laufer, In Search of America: Photography from the Road, 1936–1976 (PhD diss., Washington University, 1992), 109. For Stryker’s letter, see Stu Cohen, The Likes of Us: America in the Eyes of the Farm Security Administration (Boston: David R. Godline, 2009), 25.

35 Laufer, In Search of America: Photography from the Road 1936–1976, 111. Original quote Roy E. Stryker and Nancy Wood, In This Proud Land (New York: Galahad Books, 1973), 9.

36 Peter Galassi, Robert Frank in America (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl; Stanford, CA: Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, 2014), 42. 17

insinuation of life and art imitating each other. Life is made up of mediated materials such as graphic arts, posters, and popular images, as art and photography portray and document every facet of life at the same time as a reciprocal process.37 The significance of automobile culture, therefore, is reiterated both in real life and in its representation.

For example, next to Joe’s Auto Graveyard, Pennsylvania, 1936, Evans then illustrated two images representing signs of ordinary life closely related to the automobile culture. One is a close-up of the word “GAS” in Roadside Gas Sign, 1929. The roadside gas sign, nearly scribbled, might suggest the fast-growing need for refueling business.

[1-1] In the other, Lunch Wagon Detail, New York, 1931, is a detail of a painting on a food truck; the couple in the painting is eating a sandwich on the road alongside their car with the open landscape in the background. [1-2] In Parked Car, Small Town Main Street,

1932, a couple sitting in their vehicle gaze directly into the camera; it was positioned next to the depiction of lunch wagon painting as if Evans were implying that they might be the same couple. [1-3] Yet, the mood of the couple on the main street and their gaze at the camera are different from the couple on the rural pleasure trip depicted on the lunch wagon. In the previous image, the smartly dressed couple escaped to the countryside,

37 Galassi, “Introduction” in Walker Evans & Company, 20. 18

whereas the couple in the latter one was transposed into real life. Whether it is a fantasy or actuality, the lives of both couples benefited from the assistance of automobiles.

Galassi argued that their sense of what they do or who they are is not unique to them, rather it represents the identity and aspirations of the society to which they belong.38

This reading of the juxtaposition of two images of the young couples with their automobiles followed Kirstein’s tips about how the series should by approached: “These photographs are arranged to be seen in their given sequence.” In the text on the front flap of the dust-jacket of the 1938 edition, the point was made in capitals: “The reproductions presented in this book are intended to be looked at in their given sequence.”39 Galassi further pointed out the reappearance of automobiles as key protagonist in plates 24 through 27. He also argued that the last two, views of main streets of small towns, symbolize the theme of community. Following up on Galassi’s notion of automobile culture as a theme in the series, I will examine more closely the implication and importance of each of these images.40

38 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 32.

39 The book format and its sequential setting promote reading photographs comparatively and situating images within a narrative. Kirstein, “Photographs of America: Walker Evans” in American Photographs, 198. Also quoted in David Campany, Walker Evans: The Magazine Work (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2014), 24-25, 68.

40 Galassi, “Introduction” in Walker Evans & Company, 20. 19

In 1931, Evans went on the road driving through many cities in Massachusetts and New York. On that trip, he was accompanied by Lincoln Kirstein, who later was to write the essay for Evans’s American Photographs, and John Brooks Wheelwright, a poet and architect from a wealthy Boston family. They traveled in a Ford Model T, with Evans in the rumble seat. The project was to document 19th-century American domestic architecture.41 In his Main Street, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1931, [1-4] (photograph

27 of the first part in American Photographs), Evans captured a common scene of parked vehicles on main street, an increasingly common sight in the vernacular landscape.42

Evans took this photo on a rainy day while the street and curb seemed to be wet. What may have caught his eye was the juxtaposition of cars and trees in regard to the difference in form and likeness in the tonality. The parked cars on the main street provided a powerful uniformity. Evans also captured the glare of the wet asphalt road and sidewalk.

Despite the lack of pedestrians, perhaps due to weather, season, or time, or broader

41 Judith Keller, “Walker Evans: A Chronology,” in Walker Evans: The Getty Museum Collection (Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty, Museum, 1995), xx. Gilles Mora and John T. Hill, Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1993), 358. Thomas Nau, Walker Evans: Photographer of America (New Milford, CT: Roaring Brook Press, 2007), 22. Evans always wanted to work when the light was directly on each house. He would set up the view camera slowly, and then adjust the camera and lens. For this 19th century, Victorian architecture project, Evans was primarily using the large view camera with the 6.5 x.8.5”-glass plate.

42 In the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the same picture has a more detailed title, Parked Cars and Elm Trees on Broadway, from High Elevation Saratoga Springs, New York, 1931, accessed March 18, 2015. http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/274797 20

factors like the Depression, the parked cars suggested a human presence linked to the location. In a series of photographs he took during their visit in Saratoga Springs, Evans also captured the façade and architectural detail of the United States Hotel, cropped on the right of this picture.43 Saratoga Springs was once a tourist city famous for mineral springs, horse and car races, and gambling. Just one block away from the United States

Hotel is another landmark of the city, the Grand Union Hotel, which used to be the largest hotel in the world. Thus, as Evans visited Saratoga Springs and photographed its busiest street, he recalled and reflected on the city once prosperous from tourism. Hence, Evans represented not merely the façade of the landmark hotels, but also the façade of the city.44

43 Walker Evans, Walker Evans at Work (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 58-63. In the following series of pictures, Evans photographed the United States Hotel to include its Victorian style façade. Evans also photographed several scenes of the Grand Union Hotel, one block south, once the largest hotel in the world. By referring to a photograph taken by Jesse Sumner Wooley, perhaps in 1907, it is very likely that Evans took his main street overview from the Worden Hotel, next to the United States Hotel. See “Historic Saratoga: Broadway,” accessed March 13, 2015, http://www.timesunion.com/saratoga/article/Historic-Saratoga-Broadway-4689992.php#photo-1121985. Another picture of the United States Hotel that Evans took was labeled as Hotel Porch, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1930-31 as photograph 34 in the second part of American Photographs along with other pictures of architecture. Evans took some shots of the main street, Broadway, in front of the United States Hotel from street level, such as View of Broadway with the United States Hotel in Foreground, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1931, Walker Evans Archive 1994.256.80, accessed May 5, 2015, http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/275381. Evans also took several shots at the same elevated vantage point at the Worden Hotel, such as Side View of the United States Hotel Porch, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1931, Walker Evans Archive, 1994.256.202, accessed May 5, 2015, http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/274855. Nevertheless, both photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art along with several others were incorrectly identified and labeled as Grand Union Hotel.

44 Before the Great Depression in 1911 or 1912, the rise of anti-gambling reform that forced the temporary closing of the race track triggered the decline of the tourism in Saratoga Spring. “History of Saratoga,” accessed March 15, 2015, http://www.saratogaspringsvisitorcenter.com/about-saratoga-springs/history-of-saratoga. 21

In 1931, in his essay on “The Reappearance of Photography,” Evans indicated that “the element of time entering into a photograph provides a departure for as much speculation as an observer can make.”45 Speaking to the objective of Evans’s photographs of America in the 1930s, in another note to be included in the second edition of American Photographs in 1962, he wrote “Evans was and is interested in what any present time will look like as the past.”46 As a result, as Evans photographed the main street and architecture of major hotels in Saratoga Springs, his implicit idea about time, present and past, then and now, was suggested through these images as well.

Evans’s photographs of cars parked on the main street occur not only in towns in the East coast but also in the South, such as the image, Main Street, Greensboro, Alabama,

Summer, 1936, photograph 26 in the first part of American Photographs. [1-5] Without the rainy and gloomy weather he previously documented in Saratoga Springs, Evans provided an analogous scene in Main Street, Greensboro, Alabama, Summer, 1936. What links the images is again the prevalence of the automobile in the daily life and ordinary landscape of America among every town in the nation. Also, both pictures were

45 Mora and Hill, Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye, 133. Also Campany, Walker Evans: The Magazine Work, 213. Original quote in Walker Evans, “The Reappearance of Photography,” Hound & Horn, 1931, 125–28.

46 Walker Evans, Walker Evans at Work, 151. Also see Mora and Hill, Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye, 133. 22

presumably taken from the upper floor of the local hotel, the Worden Hotel in Saratoga

Springs and the Greensboro Hotel in Greensboro.47 As to the differences, one can easily tell the distinction between the weather in the northeast and south, especially as Evans pointed out he took the photograph in summer. The light and shadow evidently are sharper and more vivid in Evans’s Main Street, Greensboro Alabama, Summer, 1936.

Evans took his Saratoga Springs, New York picture on a higher floor than he did in

Greensboro. These elevated shots are common in Evans’s work in order to provide an overview of the townscape. The viewpoints of each result produce nuanced senses of pictorial space. Evans provided a view that contained a longer street in Saratoga Springs,

New York, reinforcing the uniformity of the parked cars by pairing them with trees lining the street and with the open sky in the background. On the contrary, Evans captured the hustle and bustle of the local main street in Greensboro, by constructing and cropping the

47 Evans took several overview photographs from the second floor balcony of the Greensboro Hotel, such as View of Main Street with Parked Cars, Pedestrians, and Alabama Power Company Sign, Greensboro, Alabama, 1936, which includes a tire shot sign, too. This shot was taken from the exact same elevated vantage point, but Evans shifted the camera slightly to the right so that he could photograph the sidewalk from both sides of the main street in Greensboro, Alabama; accessed May 5, 1936, http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/275718. Evans also looked east and captured the other side of the main street, as it appeared in Courthouse and Other Buildings, Greensboro, Alabama, 1936. See Maddox, Walker Evans: Photographs for the Farm Security Administration, 1935-1938, plate 234. The same picture also is titled Main Street Buildings and County Courthouse Cupola, 1936, Department of Prints and Photographs, the Library of Congress, accessed March 30, 2015, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8c52931. By referencing the current street view in Greensboro, Alabama, the original building of the Greensboro Hotel still stands on the Main Street, and a plaque of the Greensboro Hotel on top of the façade is clear as well. 23

pictorial space. One distinct difference between these two main street scenes is that, as appeared in Evans’s pictures, several curbside gas pumps can be found on the main street in Greensboro.48

From Saratoga Springs, New York to Greensboro, Alabama, whether Evans photographed the main street before or during his affiliation with the RA/FSA, it is clear that he was consistent in his style and subject matter, particularly the way in which he intended to picture America by depicting iconic main street scenes. As he had done in

Saratoga Springs and Greensboro, Evans often took his overview shots of main streets from the hotels in which he was staying. He also walked around on the streets and looked for subjects to photograph. Evans made several exposures of the street scenes and architectural aspect of the major hotels in Saratoga Springs. In Greensboro, he photographed storefronts and two African American youths pushing their pickup truck outside a gas station on the main street. [1-6] Evans captured this coincidental scene of pushing a truck by using a 35mm camera instead of the large-view 8 x 10 one that he normally used. We are not certain whether the pickup truck was broken or out of gas, or if

48 In terms of its form, this kind of gas pump is categorized as “curbside.” See John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle, The Gas Station in America (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1994), 134. 24

the driver was trying to save gas by manually pushing the car across the street.49

The automobile landscapes that Evans encountered were not limited to the main street; he also focused on roadside facilities such as gas stations and vendors. Depth of pictorial space sometimes played a central role in some of Evans’s roadside pictures. It demonstrates Evans’s analytical viewing and framing, shown in his meticulous compositions and mastery of arranging foreground and background. Heir to the tradition of straight photography practiced by Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, Evans’s virtuosity in formal structure continued to legitimize photography as modern art.50 In his Roadside

View Alabama Coal Area Company Town, 1936 (photograph 7 of the second part in

American Photographs), Evans captured the gas station with its distinctive sign above and a row of houses for miners in the background.51 [1-7] The array of wires also caught

Evans’s attention and became essential to the picture, marking off zones of space. The multiple notions of energy, such as gas, coal mining, and electricity, are implied

49 In Evans’s photo of two young African Americans pushing a truck, Street Scene, Greensboro, Alabama, 1936, Library of Congress, LC-USF3301-031298-M2, the Greensboro Hotel is shown in the background, accessed May 6, 2015, http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8a44481/.

50 Gerald Silk, Automobile and Culture (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art; New York: Abrams, 1984), 110.

51 This photograph is cataloged as Roadside Gas Station and Miners’ Houses, Lewisburg, Alabama, Dec 17, 1935 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walker Evans Archive, 1994.258.352, accessed May 6, 2015, http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/275795. 25

coincidentally in this scene. Evans made more than one photograph at the same location.

For example, by comparing to Roadside Gas Station with Miners' Houses across Street,

Lewisburg, Alabama, Dec 17, 1935, [1-8] we could speculate that the car in Pl. 1-7 might be Evans’s own automobile, because as he set up his 8 x 10 large view camera and the tripod, the other car had already finished refueling and left. Also, on closer inspection, there is a pedestrian on the other side of the road in the foreground in Pl. 1-8, yet in Pl.

1-7 the same figure already walked to the farther end in the background. In Evans’s final image, only one car is shown in the picture, which allowed the distanced view that Evans seemed to want and added the layer of empty space that invites the viewer to participate in the scene with the presence of the man next to the car. The figure standing in the center of the picture begs identification: is he a driver, a local resident, a miner, or a gas station employee? The final selection not only appears more compositionally resolved, but also offers a picturesque implication of the highway travel experience. More importantly, it might suggest Evans’s presence and travel by including his own automobile in the picture.

As Evans stopped at the gas station, he also looked back and documented the road he had driven. The pictures taken in Lewisburg, Alabama may seem analogous to an earlier one that Evans had made in West Virginia, Scott’s Run Mining Camp near Morgantown, West 26

Virginia, July 1935.52 [1-9] Although not included in his American Photographs, Evans composed the scene with the automobile and the gas pump in the left foreground, and captured the row of houses diagonally extended to the vanishing point.

With the mass production of the automobile, and construction of the federal and rural highways throughout the United States before and during the 1930s, gas stations appeared in cities, suburbs, and nearby residential areas, inevitable and necessary encounters for Evans. The gas station or roadside country store, which provided gas service, became a common and important place not only for Evans but also for other motorists on the road. Both the driver and the car needed to be refueled.

Another gas station photograph, Evans’s Highway Corner, Reedsville, West

Virginia, June 1935, demonstrates his consistent interest in constructing the pictorial space within the frame but without the stretch line to the vanishing point. Each element within the picture again is framed and positioned carefully. [1-10] In this case, the gas station is at the farther side of the picture at the opposite corner from where Evans stood,

52 Shooting in West Virginia was one of Evans’s earliest missions. The Department of the Interior needed public relations photographs for the Arthurdale Subsistence Homesteads Project located near Reedsville, West Virginia, a cooperative of government-built homes, farms, and vacuum cleaner factories designed to provide new opportunities for unemployed minders. Evans left Washington by car on June 26 with a new Leica and a new 8x10 view camera. Jeff L. Rosenheim, “‘The Cruel Radiance of What Is’: Walker Evans and the South” in Walker Evans (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000), 69-70. Scott’s Run Mining Camp near Morgantown, West Virginia, July, 1935, LC-USF342-T01-000857-A, accessed May 6, 2015, http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8c52857/. 27

and the sign and pole make up the foreground. The pictorial elements including the sign, house, and pole, as well as the wires, therefore became hallmarks of Evans’s idiosyncratic style. Yet, everything also seems to be flattened, as if they are arranged in the same layer of space. Therefore, Evans’s work appears almost collage-like. The gas station is usually a traveler’s last stop on his way out of town. By careful framing, Evans tried to reveal the nationalistic sign of “AMERICAN GAS.” Perhaps, by refueling the car, the nation is refueled, too.53

Moreover, Evans documented his encounter with a roadside vendor in his

Roadside Stand near Birmingham, 1936, photograph 35 of the first part of pictures from his series American Photographs. [1-11] Certainly signage always had been one of the

Evans’s primary photographic interests.54 When he was a boy, his father was a copywriter for an advertising agency: therefore, Evans’s appreciation for graphic design, and its relationship to the architecture became a constant subject matter throughout his

53 Highway Corner, Reedsville, West Virginia, June 1935, accessed May 6, 2015, http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/34746/walker-evans-highway-corner-reedsville-west-virginia-a merican-1935/. Evans’s style of dissecting the pictorial space within the frame certainly inspired photographers in later generations. In my dissertation, I will discuss Lee Friedlander’s work in particular as one of the followers of this formalist tradition labeled by Evans.

54 For Walker Evans’s extensive interest in portraying signage throughout his career, see Walker Evans et al., Walker Evans: Signs (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1998). 28

career.55 Evans was not only aware of the signage in the scene but also portrayed the direct gaze of the children at the stand. Two farm boys hold gigantic melons in front of the stand, as the girl in the shadow of farther center also posed for Evans, which showed an engaging interaction between the subjects and the photographer.

Before the Depression, when Evans was still young, he used to spend summers working in an automobile factory as a lesson in earning money and the value of work.56

During the 1930s, roadside businesses were common Evans’s subjects. In his Garage,

Southern City Outskirts, 1936, [1-12] photograph 25 of the first part from American

Photographs, Evans paid attention to the visual elements of the auto garage, including the signage, the form of the tires hung on the façade, and the glamorous women standing and waiting for the car to be fixed. Evans stylistically juxtaposed the female figures, especially the one on the left looking right and standing in front of the tires hung on the wall, with the geometric square of the garage and the round shape of the tires, as well as the curvy auto parts of the automobile, including the hood part hung on the right. The truck in front of the shop appears to be a Ford Model AA, a variant of the Model A,

55 See “The Exacting Eye of Walker Evans” at the Florence Griswold Museum website, accessed March 31, 2015, http://florencegriswoldmuseum.org/exhibitions/online/the-exacting-eye-of-walker-evans/

56 Ibid. 29

which had succeeded the famous Model T.

A similar visual format and another pickup truck appeared in Evans’s

Westchester, New York, Farmhouse, 1931, photograph 8 of the second part in American

Photographs, portraying the vernacular landscape that includes Ford Model TT, a variant of the Model T for trucks, as a commonly owned object in the frame. [1-13] In the 1930s, both in cities and rural areas, the automobile ostensibly became a significant possession appearing in the landscape and thus as prominent part of American visual culture. This juxtaposition of the automobile, the farmhouse, and the rural landscape recalls a history of landscape depiction. In this case, the automobile becomes the primary subject in the center of its surroundings, suggesting the relation between human activity, possession, and property and the land.

In the long course of the development of landscape as a subject matter and genre in art, the Dutch Republic in the 1600s looked upon its countryside as a vital part of its economy and identity. In contrast to the Dutch landscapes, the 18th century English painter Thomas Gainsborough provided a hybrid example of portrait and depiction of the natural landscape in his painting, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, c. 1750.[1-14] In

Gainsborough’s case, the landscape is associated with Robert Andrews’s estate. Half of 30

the composition given over to the scenery is related to Andrews’s wealth, identity, and social status.57 On the other hand, in American Photographs, Evans provided a straight-on portrayal of an automobile in front of a farmhouse, the modernized machine and the human habitation, surrounded by rural landscape. The human is absent as well as present in the landscape. [1-13] The photograph of an automobile in the rural landscape not only is reminiscent of a genre painting, depicting the customs and lifestyle, but also treats the automobile as its central subject, having the effect of a portrait. Although mixing a portrait, landscape, and genre picture may not be Evans’s original intention, the photograph bears such correspondence, inviting the viewer to contemplate on the presence of the automobile in the milieu and its relationship to the ordinary life and vernacular landscape.

In another street scene captured by Evans in the Deep South, Street Scene with

Parked Cars, Mule-Drawn Wagon, and Bucket Seat Model T Ford, Marion, Alabama,

1936, there is a better sense that Evans’s confrontation between the Model T and its variant was not merely a coincidence but was to portray the phenomenon at that time.

57 Douglas Nickel, “Photography, Perception, and the Landscape” in America in View: Landscape Photography 1865 to Now (Rhode Island: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 2012), 19. By favoring the “lower” genres of painting, the Dutch first coined the term “landscape” (lantscap) in the late 16th century to describe a type of picture that featured naturalistic-looking scenery. See also “Mr. and Mrs. Andrews” at the National Gallery, accessed April, 10, 2015, http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/thomas-gainsborough-mr-and-mrs-andrews. 31

[1-15] By carefully framing the shot in order to juxtapose the machine in the foreground,

Evans obviously intended to include the mules and wagon in the background, perhaps suggesting that some farmers still adhered to the old fashioned means of transportation probably because they could not afford to purchase and maintain a car. In fact, by the end of manufacturing of Model T Fords in 1928, half of all cars in America were the Model

T.58 In this respect, one must not forget that also in 1936, the idea of “Farewell to the

Model T” was delivered by E.B. White in his essay “Farewell My Lovely” that was first published in The New Yorker. White stated: “The last Model T was built in 1927, and the car is fading from what scholars call the American scene—which is an understatement, because to a few million people who grew up with it, the old Ford practically was the

American scene.”59 We are not sure if Evans was echoing the commemoration for the

Model T, but he did grasp the zeitgeist of the era.

58 Albert Mroz, American Cars, Trucks and Motorcycles of World War I: Illustrated Histories of 225 Manufacturers (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2010), 125. The last Model T was built in 1927 and sold in 1928 in America.

59 E. B. White, Farewell to Model T and From Sea to Shining Sea (New York: Little Bookroom, 2003), 9. The success of Ford and his associates also can be seen in results of a survey in Fortune magazine in 1937, conducted by the National Association of Manufacturers. The public were asked the question: “Will you name one manufacturer or manufacturing company, either in this city or elsewhere, whose policies you approve in the main.” The results were Ford Motor Company for 47.2 percent; Procter and Gamble for 3.3; General Motors for 3.1; Hershey for 2.0; General Electric for 1.4; and Chrysler for 1.2. Among the “big three” automobile makers, Ford obviously won a landslide positive impression in the American mind. See Reynold M. Wik, Henry Ford and Grass-Roots America (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1972), 58. 32

Before the birth of the Model T, when the automobile was first manufactured and introduced, it was an object of luxury. In Wheels for a Nation, Frank Donovan literally described the Model T as the first peoples’ car, a precursor to Volkswagen.

Donovan argued that the Model T not only “provided the common man with his first and biggest symbol and power,” but also “accelerated a new development of the industrial system that diffused wealth in a manner that made the new order possible.”60 Several aspects made the Model T ideal for the general public. In 1908, the first Model T’s touring car sold for $850, but the price decreased over the years. By 1914, the first year in which over half a million Model Ts were made, the price was only $490, and it further declined to $290 in 1924.

From the end of the World War I until 1925, approximately half the cars made in

America were Model T Fords. Furthermore, since the Model T was so reliable and durable, they represented far more than half the cars on the road. Secondly, Ford designed the Model T’s three-point suspension system for rough roads, which provided outstanding ability for maneuvering and turning.61 Because of its ruggedness, it was ideal for

60 Donovan, Wheels for A Nation, 99. When Donovan wrote a chapter on the Model T, he titled it “The Mechanical Cockroach.”

61 Ibid., 102–3. For the details and price for the Model T each year, see Bruce W. McCalley, The Model T Ford Encyclopedia, 1909–1927: A Comprehensive Guide to the Evolution and Changes of the Major 33

suburban and rural road conditions, which was perfect for farmers and small-town residents. The parts also were standardized and inexpensive; even if the car needed a repair, it could be fixed quickly. In 1913, Ford sold 189,000 cars, while orders for another

100,000 remained unfilled. Compared to other cars of the era, the Model T was easier to drive because of its spur planetary transmission that provided ease of operation, and smooth and silent running.62 As noted, many people tended to purchase used cars during the Depression because they could not afford new ones. In 1927, the average life a motorcar was 7.04 years. An estimated 75% of all cars sold in any given year would still be functioning 4.75 years later; 50% would be operating for 6.95 years, and 25% at the end of 9.2 years.63 As a result, whether it was in the suburbs, rural areas, or on the small town main street, one would not be surprised that Evans actually saw and photographed that Ford Model T and its variants and successors.

In his Sidewalk in Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1936, the first picture from the sequence of four automobile landscapes that Galassi mentioned in American Photographs, one cannot help but notice the appearance of another 1926 Model T Ford as it was parked

Components of the Model T Ford (Burbank, CA: Model T Ford Club of America, 1989).

62 John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle, Motoring; The Highway Experience in America (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 14.

63 Ibid., 20. 34

in front of the barbershop in the foreground of the picture. [1-16] Considering that Evans took this photograph in 1936, the driver was still driving a car manufactured 10 years ago.

As mentioned earlier, car sales dropped about 75% from 1929 to 1932, and many dealerships were forced to shut down. Garages and repair shops became more popular and prosperous, however, as people tended to purchase used cars. This is perhaps one of the reasons that Evans selected Garage in Southern City Outskirts, 1936 as the next picture in American Photographs. [1-12]

As Evans began to photograph in 1928, he was timely to capture how the automobile and its prevalence marked the common scenes of the day. He also suggested the underlying material culture of these automobile landscapes in the United States. The widespread ownership of automobiles ended the isolation of farmers. Donovan vividly noted the story of a bathtub versus a car: only 12% of farm families had running water, while 60% had a car. When an investigator from the Department of Agriculture asked a family why they chose to live with a car rather than a bathtub, the farm wife replied,

“Why, you can’t go to town in a bathtub!”64 The preference of a car over a bathtub is also true for many factory workers living in a small city, while 26 car-owning families

64 Donovan, Wheels for A Nation, 160. 35

lived in shabby-looking houses, 21 of them did not have bathtubs. This perfectly explains how the automobile has always been fundamental for the daily life of ordinary

Americans.

Frontal shots that provide clear architectural details often play a significant role in Evans’s photographic documentation in American Photographs. For the portrayal of main street, for instance, Evans not only provided the elevated overview of the array of automobiles but also offered several frontal shots of the vicinity, often from across the street. In his Main Street Block, Selma, Alabama, Dec. 1935, photograph 30 in the second part of American Photographs [1-17], Evans squarely positioned the frame with a frontal view of the buildings and implicitly included part of an automobile at the right corner to balance the picture, similar to the function of the street light on the left. Main street is not only the center and hub of small towns but is also presented as a place in-between. In many small towns in America, the main street connects the town with its nearby highways, as well as being the central business district in town. Most essential businesses usually can be found on the main street.

Like other of his shots, Evans, in his Country Store and Gas Station, Alabama,

1936, photograph 14 of the second part from American Photographs, [1-18] depicted a 36

roadside store along with its gas pump at the right foreground corner. Although Evans cropped the lower foreground of the photograph in the exhibition and photo book, he provided significant distance between the store and himself in the original negative. He used a lens that created enough distance to include the surroundings of the store, suggesting its locale on open ground, presumably on the roadside in a rural area.

The frontal shot of the main street in Plate 1-18 can be compared to portrayals of street scenes in New York City, such as Early Sunday Morning, 1930 by Edward Hopper, a painter working in the first half of the 20th century. [1-19] Although Evans later denied any influence, his earliest exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1933, Walker

Evans: 19th Century Houses, actually overlapped with Edward Hopper: Retrospective

Exhibition at the museum. Thus, it has been speculated that Evans certainly encountered

Hopper’s work, especially Early Sunday Morning.65 Hopper produced drama through the long, early morning shadows on the street, and the sense of loneliness and desolation in

65 Evans replied: “This is a case of parallel. I didn’t know Hopper or what he was doing. I was doing very similar things. It just happens. It’s one of the wonders of the art world.” See “The Exacting Eye of Walker Evans,” this exhibition was on view from October 1, 2011 to January 29, 2012 at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut. http://florencegriswoldmuseum.org/exhibitions/online/the-exacting-eye-of-walker-evans/. Walker Evans: 19th Century Houses was on view from November 16 to December 8, 1933, while Edward Hopper: Retrospective Exhibition was shown from October 30 to December 8, 1933. In the press release for Evans’s show, it was suggested that Evans’s show was one of the three “smaller” exhibitions in addition to Hopper’s retrospective. See “Exhibition Records,” accessed March 31, 2015. http://www.moma.org/learn/resources/archives/EAD/MoMAExhFilesb.html. 37

this unpopulated scene. Both artists display a fascination with the simplified forms and carefully constructed compositions that urban storefronts can provide. They paid attention to the architectural detail but in a slightly different way. Hopper, as a painter, could paint the scene more selectively and freely by altering the scale of the elements in his scene, such as the fireplug and the setting of the house and its windows. For example, not a single window on the second floor looked the same, as if each house suggested its unique ongoing story. Yet, noticeably, both artists deliberately depicted their scenes by suggesting the serenity and emptiness of the time and place. Similarly, with the frame houses occupying the majority portion of each picture, both artists included an extra layer of space with elements in the street in the foreground—in Hopper’s case, a barber’s sign and fireplug, whereas in Evans, the street light and part of an automobile.66 The car on the right in Evans’s photograph not only balanced the whole picture, but also suggested that a human was once there or going to be at this location. Both works may also be reminiscent of Hopper’s earlier work, Sunday, 1926, also included in his 1933 retrospective. [1-20] By the time Hopper painted Sunday, 1926, America already was

66 Evidence has shown that Hopper altered the scale of the house in order to create the spatiality of the street that he wanted. Hopper also eliminated some of the buildings in the background and moved the location of the fireplug, as well as removing the shutters. See the exhibition labels and the study of a comparison of Hooper’s painting and the photographs of the same location. Carter Foster, “City Pendants: Early Sunday Morning and Nighthawks” in Carter Foster et al., Hopper Drawing (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2013), 98–101. 38

experiencing the early effects of the Great Depression. Hopper might have suggested the national anxiety through the lonely desperate figure and the darkened shop windows that imply stores might be closed for the weekend or permanently.67 In Evans’s picture, very similarly, a sign in the left window stated that the store was closed and available for rent.

Yet, what might be less depressing is the marking on both windows announcing the upcoming football game, Selma vs. Tuscaloosa, Friday 3pm at Rowell Field.

Another pictorial parallel between these two artists occurs in Evans’s pictures of gas stations and Hopper’s Gas, 1940. [1-21] Unlike Evans, who needed sufficient sunlight and had to take his photographs mostly during the day, Hopper’s roadside gas station seemed to be depicted around dusk mixing both dimming natural light and artificial light. Through the composition and the lighting, Hopper charged his scene with a cinematic quality through arrangements such as lonely worker, dark shadow in the farther end of the road, and the contrast of the empty and open space on the left of the picture. Gas stations through Evans’s optical vision and Hopper’s painterly eyes were not only referential to each other, but also demonstrated the difference and characteristics between photography and painting. More importantly, in Evans’s photograph, [1-7] the

67 See “Edward Hopper, Sunday, 1926” at the Phillips Collection and its website, accessed March 31, 2015 http://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/artwork/Hopper-Sunday.htm 39

car presented in the scene is suggested to be Evans’s own automobile; on the contrary, in

Hopper’s painting, the absence of any automobile might be related to Hopper’s working method since he often finished his sketch from inside of the car.

Despite the difference between Evans’s and Hopper’s portrayals of gas stations, they both traveled frequently and described the look of the essential roadside service, as well as paid tribute to the subject as it became more common not only to the artists but also to Americans during this time.68 By the mid-1930s, American had some 200,000 gas stations. There was once an average of one filling station every 895 feet and one restaurant for every two stations on the 48-mile stretch of U.S. 1 between New Haven,

Connecticut, and the New York State, the route perhaps both Hopper and Evans traveled from time to time.69 Thus, Hopper, as well as Evans, presented an aspect of modernism in which mundane and familiar subject matter was presented in a style of realism that

68 In the discussion about works by Evans and Hopper, the intention is not to establish that one artist influenced the other. There is a similarity of subject matter, as well as simplicity of composition that these two artists legitimately shared. Robert Flynn Johnson, “Introduction” in America Observed: Etchings by Edward Hopper and Photographs by Walker Evans (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1976), 5. Also, back in 1933, Walker Evans: Photographs of Nineteen Century Houses was on view at the Museum of Modern Art from November 16 to December 8, while Edward Hopper: Retrospective Exhibition was also on view in the same museum from October 30 to December 8. The shared interest in depicting urban views and vernacular landscapes between Evans and Hopper was not uncommon for the audience in the 1930s. The previous year, Helen Appleton Read already reviewed a show of Evans’s work, comparing it with Hopper in Brooklyn Daily Bugle, February 7, 1932. See Campany, Walker Evans: The Magazine Work, 49, 71.

69 Davidson, On the Move: Transportation and the American Story, 178. 40

encapsulated everyday life and travel while also evoking the subconscious and strains of memory.70

Admittedly, despite the difference in medium, works by Evans and Hopper often shared many qualities. Hopper’s paintings rendered “a detached viewpoint, which has been compared to a lens,” very much like the characteristics that Evans’s photographs provided.71 In 1928, the year Evans began to photograph, Hopper wrote an essay on a contemporary painter Charles Burchfield, in which he incidentally explained his own attitude to the scenes of banality and ordinary objects that both Hopper and Evans often depicted, including “the look of asphalt road as it lies in the broiling sun at noon,” as well as “the dusty Fords and gilded movies.” Hopper further noted: “…all the weltering tawdry life of the American small town, and behind all, the sad desolation of our suburban landscape. He derives daily stimulus from these that others flee from or pass with indifference.”72 Hopper’s words on Burchfield also perfectly described the pictorial

70 Sarah G. Powers, Images of Tension: City and country in the Work of Charles Sheeler, Thomas Hart Benton, and Edward Hopper (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 2010), 179. Hopper demonstrated an aspect of modernism in a realist manner, a more representational view; whereas Stuart Davis, who also traveled on the road frequently and painted about it, showed a more avant-garde and Cubist style in his paintings.

71 Brian O’Doherty, American Masters: The Voice and the Myth (New York: Random House, 1973), 20.

72 Galassi, “Introduction” in Walker Evans & Company, 22–23. See also O’Doherty, American Masters: The Voice and the Myth, 20. While the work of Burchfield is described as mystic and cryptic, Hopper’s work translates melancholy and the cinematic quality. Evans’s photographs often transformed the sad 41

and inner qualities of Evans’s photographs. Following Galassi’s argument, Evans shared with contemporary American painters—especially those who took America as their subject, such as Hopper and Burchfield—the inevitable interest of depicting automobiles and the roadside from one town to another, as well as everything within and every place in between.73

While the car may symbolize the wealth of American life, it also could represent decay, as in his Joe’s Auto Graveyard, Pennsylvania, 1936, photograph 7 in the first part of American Photographs. [1-22] Evans captured the aftermath of how the cars were used, treated, and abandoned, telling the other side of the story of American prosperity and life style based on the automobile. Galassi argues that Evans makes an ironic point by choosing a junkyard as his first image of actual automobiles since the book was published in 1938, just thirty years after Ford’s first Model T.74 As Gerald Silk notes, Evans, through this spectacle of piles of auto bodies in the auto graveyard in the landscape, desolation in vernacular landscape into well-composed and highly aestheticized views, different from the visionary and realist paintings by his contemporaries.

73 For the experience and depictions of city, country, and spaces in between, see Powers, Images of Tension: City and Country in the Work of Charles Sheeler, Thomas Hart Benton, and Edward Hopper. Charles Sheeler worked for an advertisement company, and was hired by Henry Ford for six weeks to depict Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge Plant. As an owner of a Ford Model T, Thomas Hart Benton depicted one in his famous mural America Today, 1930 in the theme of Midwest. Benton also illustrated the cover for John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, 1939. Along with Hopper, these artists, like Evans, traveled on the road frequently, and their work are often reflections of their travels and the observation of automobile landscapes.

74 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 32. 42

portrayed the dreams of America’s agricultural and industrial richness shattered by the

Great Depression, the death of hope, a way of life, and a system of values. 75 The auto graveyard and its link to death during moments of great stress on the fabric of American society are clearly significant as Kirstein draws the connection between Evans’s

Depression-driven auto scrapheap and the documentation of piles of dead bodies during

Civil War. Kirstein approved how Evans provided a “contemporary civilization of eastern

America and its dependencies as Atget gave us Paris before the war and as Brady gave us the War between the States.”76 Although the camera is a machine and photography a science, Kirstein argued for the significant human judgment in the form of creative selection. Evans not only offered objective documentation, as had his predecessors, but also incorporated the photographer’s eye with an aestheticized depiction.

Evans’s photographs of the 1930s were not merely time capsules of the documentation of the Great Depression. Terri Weissman argued that Evans further presents a template of the Depression for symbolic aestheticization. Evans’s photographs transcended their indexical function, becoming symbols of American culture and its way

75 Silk, Automobile and Culture, 111-112.

76 Kirstein, “Photographs of America: Walker Evans” in American Photographs, 195. 43

of life. With their formalist perfection and aesthetic qualities, these photographs went beyond the very specifics that they claim to capture at the time.77 Recently, Miles Orvell also noted how several of Evans’s pictures from the 1930s fit into the long tradition of visualizing America in ruins. Evans shed light on mirroring the cultural values through the depiction of the material fabric of American civilization, including buildings, statues, roads, factories.78

By 1929, automakers in the United States already had sold 40 million cars.

Chicago dealers even promoted Used Car Week by stacking junk cars 50 feet high on an island in Lake Michigan and then torched them. Reportedly, the “pyre” was witnessed by some 100,000 people, and about 200 cars were burned and sent into “Valhalla.”79[1-23]

Unlike the 1929 photojournalist image in LIFE, Evans captured the wrecked or abandoned automobiles that he encountered all facing the same way in an orderly fashion,

77 Terri Weissman, Documentary Photography and Communicative Action: The Realisms of Berenice Abbott (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2006), 148. In the dissertation, Weissman examines Evans’s approach and aesthetic value in order to discuss and differentiate his work and style from Abbott’s. By the very specifics, Weissman argued that the economic injustice, massive unemployment, rapid industrialization, the stock market bubble, and corporate greed were erased partially in Evans’s work.

78 Miles Orvell, “America in Ruins: Photography as Cultural Narrative” in American Art Vol. 29, No. 1 (2015): 9–14.

79 Richard B. Stolley ed., Life: Century of Change, America in Pictures 1900–2000 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 2000), 86. 44

as if they were towed into the field headfirst.80 [1-22] By using a long lens, Evans made the picture with flat perspective, so that the mass of junked cars was foreshortened from the distance and could fit into the hilly countryside in the background. Therefore, these seemingly “machines in the garden” rest in peace in an elegant way, besieged by natural landscape that persists in the distance.81 In contrast to its original negative, Evans cropped the empty foreground in order to heighten the central irony of junked cars against picturesque meadow. Orvell concludes that “Evans was evincing an ecological consciousness before we knew what it was, and he was reclaiming for aesthetic purposes the detritus of industrial civilization.”82

Eco-criticism also is suggested in Evans’s Houses and Billboards in Atlanta,

1936, photograph 47 in the first part.[1-24] Evans not only showed several movie posters and the relationship between homes and commerce, but also captured a brutal barrier built in order to shield houses from the noise and pollution of an expanded road. The entrance clearly was blocked afterwards. Although Evans was definitely paying attention

80 Orvell, “America in Ruins: Photography as Cultural Narrative,” 11.

81 Walker Evans at Work, 11–12. I borrow the term from the title of Leo Marx’s book. Leo Marx, Machine in the Garden: Technology and Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964, 2000).

82 Orvell, “America in Ruins: Photography as Cultural Narrative,” 11. 45

to the architecture, such as the Victorian frame houses, the porches and balconies seemed to be charmless to him due to the barrier against traffic and pollution. At the far right,

Evans also framed the chimney of the factory in the picture. The movie posters attached to the barriers were not for the residents but for the passing motorists. The flattened space, as well as his formal and steady gaze against the speed of change, provided the consequences of progress and the dominance of automobiles in American life. Evans presented the contrast between the glamour of posters and grim life of the houses, as if the fantasy has turned its back on those living there, not much “Love before Breakfast.”83

From Picture Postcards to American Photographs

In recent studies, curator Jeff Rosenheim noted a thematic and stylistic link between the picture postcards Evans collected and the photographs he took. In Walker

83 Campany, “A Short History of the Long Road” in The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip, 14. In 1938, John Vachon, a former file clerk for the FSA was sent to the Deep South for the first time as a photographer. Vachon immediately tried to locate the houses in Evans’s picture. “I found the very place, and it was like finding a first folio Shakespeare. The signs on the billboard had changed, but I photographed it, and it’s in the file.” Tim Davis, “The Neighborhood Ketchup Ad: Photography and Housing in Unzoned America,” accessed March 22, 2015. http://www.davistim.com/essays/ketchup.php. See also Aperture, http://www.aperture.org/blog/the-neighborhood-ketchup-ad-photography-and-housing-in-unzoned-america/. On Evans’s stylistic influence on Vachon, “Oral History Interview with John Vachon,” accessed March 22, 2015, http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-john-vachon-11830 Michael Brix also mentioned that the billboard was addressing the passer-by. Brix concluded that Carol Lombard was a symbol of luxury and excess in contrast to this proletarian section of Atlanta. Yet, Brix did not explicate the eco-critical notion that the image might imply. Michael Brix, “Walker Evans’s Photographs 1928–1938: A Campaign against Right-thinking and Optimism” in Walker Evans America (New York: Rizzoli, 1991), 16. 46

Evans and the Picture Postcard, Rosenheim provides an example of the visual identification between the postcard, Front Street, Looking North, Morgan City, LA, 1929 and the similar street view Evans photographed in Street Scene, Morgan City, Louisiana,

1935.84 [1-25, 26] It seems likely that Evans stopped at a local diner, saw a postcard, and then wandered the streets looking for its location before finally making an exposure.85

The postcard is one of more than 9,000 postcards Evans collected.86 Rosenheim also focuses on the relation between Evans’s art, and the everyday style and mundane subjects of the postcards he collected. Rosenheim explores the anonymous, anti-aesthetic, documentary quality that Evans sought to achieve in his work, and this one postcard just might represent. Evans’s work benefits significantly from the “artless” quality of his popular imagery, especially the generic and often frontal style. Both Evans’s cards and his pictures can appear equally “authorless,” “simple” recordings of a scene.87 Rosenheim

84 The lack of utility poles and lines in the postcard might be a result of creating a more picturesque scene, while the Long-Allen Bridge, the truss bridge in the background in Evans’s photograph was not built until 1933, connected the historic U.S. 90, currently Louisiana state highway 182. See “Atchafalaya River Old U.S. 90 Bridge,” accessed April 19, 2017, https://bridgehunter.com/la/st-mary/35100050100001/

85 Jeff Rosenheim, Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard (G ttingen: Steidl, 2009), 10, 19. Evans photographed the view from the same perspective, and the scene was altered only by the telephone poles and a railroad bridge in the distance as signs of modernization. Elizabeth B Heuer, “Main Street Looking North from Courthouse Square” in Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity ed. David Prochaska and Jordana Mendelson (University Park, PA.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 159.

86 Rosenheim, Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard , 9.

87 Ibid., 15. 47

concludes that Evans’s intention was not to imitate the content or composition of existing picture postcards but to duplicate their spirit.88

Rosenheim proposes that the picture postcard is a form of American realism that directly influenced Evans’s stylistic development.89 Penny picture postcards came of age in American in the early part of the 20th century. Evans began to collect them around the age of ten. He picked up picture postcards while visiting towns across the Midwest during summer road trips with his family and purchased new cards from local drugstores as well. The inexpensive and ubiquitous picture postcards entered his aesthetic consciousness before any other cultural artifact.90

In 1936, Evans began to work on a new project intended to produce approximately two dozen prints in standard 3 ½ x 5 ½ inch postcard-format photographic paper with preprinted postcard backs based on a selection of his 8 x 10 negatives taken for the RA/FSA. During the preparation for this project, Evans learned how to crop his image into smaller size to frame a better picture. At first, Evans and Tom Mabry,

88 Ibid., 19.

89 Ibid., 10.

90 Ibid., 13. Also see Elizabeth B Heuer, “Main Street Looking North from Courthouse Square” in Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity ed. David Prochaska and Jordana Mendelson (University Park, PA.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 157. 48

secretary and executive director of the Museum of Modern Art at that time, had a plan for publishing and selling this set of postcard-format images. In the end, the venture was never realized. Mabry asked Evans to send some prints to the museum in order to close the matter because Evans still was under contract to the museum for some of his photographs. A week later, Evans sent 26 photographs, including 7 postcard-format prints.

Mabry then proposed that the museum publish a book and conduct an exhibition of

Evans’s photographs later in the fall of 1938, the show that eventually became Evans’s groundbreaking and monumental retrospective, American Photographs.91

After the exhibition of American Photographs closed in New York, a circulating show of 88 photographs traveled to ten venues across the country. The show was well received and praised by the photography community and the general public. The book

American Photographs was reprinted multiple times. American Photographs played an important role in the history of photography and served to promote and establish photography as a form of modern art. Before Evans photographed, he was trained to look at things and the world from the postcards that he collected during his teenage years on

91 Rosenheim, Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard, 19–22. Among Evans’s own collection of small prints, House in New Orleans, 1935, was the first on view in the exhibition and selected in his American Photographs, as photograph 24 of the second part. The number of the prints, as well as the order of the photographs in the exhibition and in the book was different from each other. See also “Appendix A: Comparative List of Works in American Photographs exhibition and catalog” in May, Off the Clock: Walker Evans and the Crisis of American Capital 1933–38, 176. 49

summer road trips with his family and at local drugstores. Evans categorized his postcard collection mostly by subjects. Although implicitly, his photographs sometimes even shared the subject matter with the postcards he collected, such as automobiles and the main street. Evans’s careful compositions of the automobile and roadside landscape were not only reminiscent of popular imagery but also true to common material culture.

The Migration and the Highway in An American Exodus

An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion, published in 1939, was a joint project of Dorothea Lange’s photographs, Paul Schuster Taylor’s textual comments, and the testimony of the migrants they had encountered on their travels between

Washington, DC and Los Angeles since 1935. Before Lange and Taylor worked on An

American Exodus and got married, Taylor had written an article for Survey Graphic on the longshoremen’s strike that had closed many West Coast ports in 1934.92 In January

1935, Taylor was asked to research and recommend a rural rehabilitation program for the

New Deal Relief Administration in California. He required a few people with academic

92 Survey Graphic was a more illustrative version of Survey Magazine, published by Paul Kellogg. Both periodicals paid attention to the labor and the underclass. At that time, Kellogg already was interested in utilizing photographs to address social issue to the public. Sam Stourdzé, “Introduction” in Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion (Paris: J.M. Place, 1999), ccix. 50

training along with a secretary to type the letters and reports, as well as a photographer.

He chose Dorothea Lange as his photographer. The office manager finally gave Lange a position as typist because people could not understand why a social scientist would need a photographer, and they did not have the budget for the position. Yet, when Taylor came to a meeting with other members of the California Relief Administration with the first project report, the director of the Division of Rural Rehabilitation tore a few sheets of paper with Lange’s photographs from the report and passed them around the table. The

Commission later voted for $200,000 to set up sanitary camps for migrant laborers.93

During March and August of 1935, Lange took over 150 photographs and made five photo albums including Taylor’s textual descriptions in order to draw public attention to the social issues of the migrants who the by then married couple had photographed and interviewed traveling back and forth from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles. The first of the five photo albums, “Rural Rehabilitation Camps for Migrants,” focused on squalid housing conditions. As she saw the increasing number of Oklahoma license plates, Lange also learned that the many field workers in California were refugees from the

93 These are based on Paul Taylor’s lecture at Wellesley College in April 1975. See Paul Taylor, Photography within the Humanities, ed. Eugenia Parry Janis and Wendy MacNeil, (Danbury, NH: Addison House Publishers, 1977), 29. 51

drought-parched plains states. In the second report in April, 1935, “Migration of Drought

Refugees to California,” Lange documented the troubling influx of the migrants and traced the newcomers to a California border station. At this point, use of the term “Social

Erosion” also anticipated the theme of An American Exodus. The final image of the booklet, an Oklahoma vehicle with a ribbed canvas top, which evoked the historic symbol of the pioneer covered wagon, would later be used on the dust jacket of the book.94 [1-27]

The covered wagon as a symbol also was used by Taylor who entitled his article for Survey Graphic, “Again the Covered Wagon,” accompanied by six of Lange’s photographs.95 Taylor evidently reflected on the restless, rootless, and landless tradition of the migrants as he studied the local and regional labor issue. For the original cover of

An American Exodus, Taylor even planned to use “Thirty-Niners” instead of “1939 style.”96 Through his preference for “Thirty-Niners,” Taylor obviously intended to compare the influx of migrants during the Depression to the Forty-niners, the gold

94 “Rural Rehabilitation Camps for Migrants,” Report of March 15, 1935. Lot 898. “Migration of Dought Refugees to California,” Report of April 17, 1935. FSA-OWI Collection, Library of Congress. See Henry Mayer, “The Making of a Documentary Book” in An American Exodus, ccxv–ccxvi.

95 Paul S. Taylor and Dorothea Lange, “Again Covered Wagon,” Survey Graphic (July 1935), 348–351.

96 Sam Stourdzé, “Introduction” in An American Exodus, ccix. The final decision of using “1939 style” seemed to be an editorial choice by the publisher. Both Taylor and Lange were disappointed about the change. 52

seekers during the Gold Rush in California in the mid-19th century, especially the ironic contrast of pursuing a better life and the American Dream in deferent centuries. Many

Forty-niners traveled by covered wagons as well.

In 1862, just a few years after the Gold Rush, President Lincoln signed two pieces of legislation that also would greatly influence the future of the West. One was the

Homestead Act, which allowed any party to file for 160 acres of public domain land.

When an individual had occupied the land for five consecutive years, he became the owner. The other was the Pacific Railroad Act, allowing “the aid in the construction of a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri river to the Pacific Ocean, and to secure to the government the use of the same for postal, military, and other purposes,” which authorized construction of the line over a central route.97 The former act particularly set the stage for the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889, and early in the 1890s, for “boomers” and “sooners” to run and claim the land that used to be Native American Territory in the west part of current state of Oklahoma. These incidents enticed Americans to continue moving west and in order to look for their own piece of the land of opportunity.

When Lange went on the field trips with Taylor and his crew, it was the first

97 Jim Harter, American Railroads of Nineteenth Century: A Pictorial History in Victorian Wood Engravings (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 1998), 94. 53

time she learned “how trained people in a field like this operated. That was the way, and they made a report.”98 Their work in California had its influence in Washington, D.C, as

Rexford G. Tugwell, the head of RA/FSA, and Stryker were among the insiders who saw their reports and booklets. Stryker soon invited Lange onto the staff in September 1935.

Lange also proposed an approach of “sociological photography” to Stryker.99 To Lange, photography was a tool of the social sciences. She would make personal contact with those she photographed by questioning them and getting into a conversation. Lange carefully would note down everything they said. She had become a social observer and accompanied her images with captions, backed up by information and firsthand accounts.100

Lange’s An American Exodus focuses on the migrants, who traveled on the highway from the Deep South and Dust Bowl area to California during the Depression.

As Taylor and Lange traveled across the southern half of America, back and forth several times between Georgia and California, they decided to begin An American Exodus with a

98 Oral history interview with Dorothea Lange, 1964 May 22, Archives of American Art, accessed May 13, 2015, http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-dorothea-lange-11757.

99 Lange to Stryker, February 4, 1936, and January 27, 1937. See Henry Mayer, “The Making of a Documentary Book” in An American Exodus, ccxvii.

100 Sam Stourdzé, “Introduction” in An American Exodus, ccix.

54

section on the “Old South,” followed by “Plantation under the Machine,” “Midcontinent,”

“Plains,” “Dust Bowls,” and “Last West.” Readers followed the stories of these migrants not only through space but also through time. By appropriating the word “Exodus,”

Lange referred to migration and escape in the biblical era, suggesting the transformation of living conditions the migrants hoped to have during and after their travels. The choice of title also is ironic because “exodus” occurred from state to state but all within the same country. The subtitle of the book “Erosion” not only refers to the erosion of the land due to sand storms and the human intervention in the Dust Bowl area, but also, arguably, implied the indifference of society to the migrant issue at that time. On a more physical and metaphorical level, the word also alludes to the erosion of the fabric of American life.

Although Stryker and Lange disagreed on the artistic and intellectual expectation of the photographs, as well as on their educational and political value, Lange published the book without the support from the RA/FSA but with Stryker’s understanding off the record.

As Lange devoted herself to documentary photography during her mission for the RA/FSA, she still occasionally felt dissatisfaction with the way her photographs were used. For example, the RA/FSA would offer individual photographs to picture or news 55

agencies, but these images were only keyed to terse definitions by topic, such as

“drought,” “wheat,” “tractors,” or “migrants.” The context of the social issue was seldom provided or referenced. For several years, prints were filed by the state in which a photographer’s assignment took place, which made it difficult to compose a thematic essay or exhibition. Moreover, picture editors often placed little emphasis on the aesthetic or intellectual qualities of the images; rather they only focused on a narrow topical framework. As a result, Lange’s work seldom offered the educational and political impact that she desired.101

One of her main purposes in An American Exodus was to go beyond these fragmentary or thematically limited presentations and seriously consider the problems paralyzing America. Therefore, in the book, she tried to expose the upheavals besetting rural life, including industrialization of agriculture, the disappearance of the family farm, repeated droughts, dust storms, and migration, as well as the chronic poverty that

101 Henry Mayer, “The Making of a Documentary Book” in An American Exodus, ccxvii. See also Milton Meltzer, Dorothea Lange: A Photographer’s Life (New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1978), 207–208.In the many letters Stryker wrote Lange during her RA/FSA years, there is a repeated note of irritation. Lange seemed to ask too much, make too many exceptions, want special treatment too often, and cost him too much time and trouble. Stryker always was showing most of others what to photograph. What Lange needed most was the logistical help from Stryker because she married and worked with Taylor, a specialist in agricultural economics who knew more about these things. Although Stryker found Lange a bit difficult to work with and laid her off, he continued his effort to promote her book, including getting the publisher to agree to make display posters for bookstore windows, using Lange’s photographs which the FSA would supply. He also provided a list of people and organizations that might help publicize the book, including Eleanor Roosevelt, and top officials of the FSA. 56

ensued.102 The book was not merely about the individuals, but about communities and movement of people, as a more collective experience and perception. Lange took photographs and edited them with Taylor in a more panoramic and symbolic way. Taylor and Lange wanted to make better use of Lange’s photographic record than the RA/FSA had done in order to educate the public on a series of issues that the government had only touched on superficially.103

As mentioned above, an image of the covered wagon was selected as the cover of An American Exodus, titled “Covered Wagon—1939 Style,” which suggests its historical significance and a connection to the migrations of American people in the past.104 [1-27] By also including a historical photograph of the Oklahoma Land Rush on page 45, An American Exodus aims to recall the recurring tradition of American settlement. Below the land rush image, Rupert B Vance’s phrase from his book Human

Geography of the South was cited, “Oklahoma was settled on the run by a white pioneer yeomanry.” [1-28] During the Depression years, Americans, especially the Okies, had to

102 Sam Stourdzé, “Introduction” in An American Exodus, ccx.

103 Henry Mayer, “The Making of a Documentary Book” in An American Exodus, ccxvii.

104 Such iconographic connection and historical context of the covered wagon may also suggest how little the progress of American life has been made. 57

travel all the way to California in order to make a living. Usage of both images reiterates the myth of mobility and exploration on the frontier of the United States.

In addition to the historical visual evidence, before the page of the section on

“Last West,” An American Exodus includes a diagram based on statistics from the

RA/FSA and California Department of Agriculture showing the origins of migrants to

California. [1-29] This may be an uncommon entry for normal photo-essays; however, it further explains the social background of the issue. By using the historical image and sociological diagram, Lange and Taylor contextualized the book and provided multi-layered implications to the complicated history of moving and migrating in

America.

Her photograph entitled U.S. 99, San Joaquin Valley, November, 1938 [1-30] is one of the images that suggests Lange’s sarcastic and critical perspective of the life of migrants on the road. The phrase on the gigantic billboard says, “Travel while you sleep.”

The message of the billboard contrasts ironically with how the billboard actually was used by these migrants: as shelter from the gust on the field. The hardship of living on the road for these three families of 14 children, as Lange notes in the book, presents a striking contrast to the smile and ease of the figure traveling by train shown in the 58

advertisement.

A similar approach can be found in the image Bread Line During the Louisville

Flood, Kentucky, 1937 [1-31] by Margaret Bourke-White. Bourke-White not only witnessed the long line of people waiting for food and clothing at a relief station but also pinpointed its irony with a background billboard proclaimed the “World’s Highest

Standard of Living.” The picture led off a feature in February 15, 1937 issue of LIFE magazine that focused on how Ohio River flood waters ravaged Louisville in 1937. As

African Americans lined up for supplies, the billboard also featured the ironic slogan of

“There’s no way like the American way” and a white family, including a dog, enjoying a road trip.105 This billboard, part of a commercial campaign by the National Association of Manufacturers, dotted the countryside.

Although not included in An American Exodus, Lange portrayed the same billboard in her Billboard on U.S. Highway 99 in California, 1937. [1-32] Unlike

Bourke-White’s picture, no actual people are included in Lange’s photograph. Yet,

Lange’s picture provided the subjective camera with the first person perspective, also

105 Accessed June 1, 2015, http://life.time.com/behind-the-picture/the-american-way-photos-from-the-great-ohio-river-flood-of-1937/# 1 59

known as the point-of-view shot in cinematography, which allowed the viewer visually to experience what Lange and other highway travelers directly encountered, the roadside billboard. Therefore, two photographers rendered a different sense of witness. While

Bourke-White was an onlooker offering the objective truth, Lange seemed to invite the viewer to become part of the roadside scene with a more engaging confrontation of the billboard and its message due to the absence of human figures.

Lange seemed to be keener and more critical on these billboards of “propaganda campaign” by the National Association of Manufacturers than the rest of the RA/FSA photographers who tried to show what had gone wrong with America and portrayed the irony of major corporate businesses continuing to flourish in the 1930s through the sufferings of the Depression.106 According to another RA/FSA photographer, Arthur

Rothstein, the RA/FSA photographers considered the Manufacturers’ clichés about the

American standard of living to be absurd. These photographers treated the billboards as fair game for visual irony. Although contrasting the life represented in the billboard and

106 James Guimond, American Photography and the American Dream (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 112–113. These billboards were part of what LIFE magazine called a “propaganda campaign.” Bourke-White’s picture might be the most famous one, but she was never a RA/FSA photographer. Guimond compared Lange’s pictures with photographs taken by Edwin Locke and Russell Lee. Arthur Rothstein also captured the same billboard in his Sign, Birmingham, Alabama, February1937, accessed May 22, 2015, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8a08316. Among those photographers, no one was as critical as Lange in regard to depicting this billboard. 60

the actual situation below, Bourke-White intended to depict the flood conditions, not the

Depression; on the contrary, the RA/FSA photographers were more attuned to the propaganda billboards and more deliberately demonstrating their irony.107

Although not included in An American Exodus, Lange provided another example of the conflict and sarcasm between the projected myth of consumption of tourism and the real situation of the migrants traveling on the road in her Toward Los Angeles,

California, March 1937 [1-33]. Lange even lowered her camera from waist level, enlarging the figures walking on the highway in contrast to the billboard that said “Next time, try the train. Relax. Southern Pacific.” Lange’s criticism in the sharp contrast between the advertisement and the real life on the road was consistent. Her indictment of the class structure in America was therefore made transparent. The Southern Pacific’s advertisement clearly contrasts with the two migrants on foot.108 The indifference is also shown by the railroad passenger’s position and closed eyes, which signify that he is riding through life unconscious of the miseries around him. Through the careful composition, Lange intensively contrasted the visual effect of the image. The image also

107 Guimond, American Photography and the American Dream, 112.

108 Mark Durden, Dorothea Lange (London; New York: Phaidon, 2001), 21. 61

became a satire on consumerism and other advertising campaigns that encourage middle-class people to only think of their own comforts and ignore the homeless and hungry people traveling on the road.109

Lange’s Highway to the West, 1938 [1-34], arguably one of the most iconic pictures about highway travel from the 1930s, appeared on page 65 of An American

Exodus. Before this page, Lange provided another image of a homeless family traveling on the road; she encountered them in Atoka County, Oklahoma June 16, 1938.[1-35] Both pictures, side by side, reciprocally intensify the harsh truth and actual situation for homeless migrants traveling on the road. For Pl. 1-34, Lange chose the caption:

“Highway to the West. They keep the road hot a goin’ and a comin’. They’ve got roamin’ in their head.” This image was taken on U.S. 54 in southern New Mexico. Many migrants traveling on the highway frequently might have encountered such a scene of empty highways along their journey, perhaps including a family like Lange portrayed in the Pl.

1-35. Lange captured the empty highway as the path and trial with barren fields on either side before entering the Promised Land—the land of milk and honey—California, as described in John Steinbeck’s novel and John Ford’s adapted film, The Grapes of Wrath

109 Guimond, American Photography and the American Dream, 113–114. 62

1939/1940. Yet, for the migrants the journey was filled with uncertainty and promise seemed to be illusory. The lack of traffic also shows America at a standstill.

In An American Exodus, Lange also documented migrant families returning to their homes from California because the living was still harsh, and they were oftentimes not welcomed there. Lange’s book has parallels in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath,

(both came out in 1939), which was based on true events and social issues involving the migrant workers in California, especially the Okies. On one hand, Taylor’s text in An

American Exodus evokes the same elegiac quality that Steinbeck sought in his novel.

Although many reviewers considered An American Exodus as an illustrative guide for

Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck had built his fiction and the journey of the

Joad family on works by Lange, Taylor, and many others significantly engaged in the

RA/FSA.110 On the other hand, Lange’s pictures also were referenced in Ford’s film, in terms of the authenticity of the visual representation of the same social issue.111

The linear perspective in Lange’s Highway to the West [1-34] deepens the visual effect. It also echoes the usage of such compositions in works in the past, which provide

110 Henry Mayer, “The Making of a Documentary Book” in An American Exodus, ccxix. Steinbeck was well acquainted with Lange’s migrant images. Marilyn Laufer, In Search of America: Photography from the Road, 1936–76, 72. See original citation Milton Meltzer, Dorothea Lange: A Photographer’s Life, 203.

111 Colin Naylor ed, Contemporary Photographers (Chicago: St. James Press, 1988), 580. 63

simplicity of form in its spatiality and sense of infinity. As Lange deliberately offers the historic context of the past in the frontier in the United States, the composition seems to be reminiscent of that in Carleton E. Watkins’s Cape Horn near Celilo, 1867. [1-36]

Watkins photographed both the natural and manmade topographical elements along his journey with the Oregon Stem Navigation Company. The sublime and colossal mountain on the right side of the picture served as a grounding device and was juxtaposed with the open sky, the vast land, and the distinct railroad in the center. Watkins made both stereographic and mammoth-plate prints at the same location. He placed the camera low to the ground to emphasize the travel by rail. Such composition was popular in railroad photography in the 19th century. The railway as a straight line was often viewed in steeply recessional perspective that became one of the themes in the emerging iconography of railway art. The receding and disappearing tracks also became the lure of railroad vision, as they provided the open landscape and awe-inspiring vistas of escape. The railroad, one of the major means of travel, transportation, and tourism in the 19th century, functioned as the trace of the human presence and the connection between people and nature. It also suggested heading off into the unknown and distant landscape.112

112 Watkins’s composition of the photograph and stereograph seems to be identical, accessed June 1, 2015, 64

Watkins not only documented vestiges of personal travel but also commerce and trade in 19th-century North America. More importantly, the picture suggests a visual metaphor for Manifest Destiny, “the belief that the United States was destined to span the continent with its sovereignty.”113 Watkins implied the aesthetic beauty, commercial value, and, perhaps, national ideology within the picture, as the railroad follows along the river to the farther end of the picture. In a similar way, Lange’s highway occupies the center ground of the picture, reaching to its destination, in this case presumably

California. Lange’s picture of the empty highway reenacts yet reevaluates the Manifest

Destiny. [1-34]

Although not included in An American Exodus, another photograph of the railroad track taken by Lange, Southwestern New Mexico, June 1938, [1-37] further resembled her composition of linear perspective in Highway to the West [1-34] and the visual format in Watkins’s railroad vision in Cape Horn near Celilo, 1867. [1-36] It was

http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/82592/carleton-watkins-cape-horn-near-celilo-columbia-river-a merican-about-1867/. Also, Anne M. Lyden, Railroad Vision: Photography, Travel, and Perception (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), 84–85. Mark Ruwedel revisited many railroad sites and documented their current state, including this location in Cape Horn near Celilo, Interstate 84, after Carleton Watkins, 1998. Today the original rail has been removed, yet an interstate highway exists alongside its original track with a modern Amtrak rail on the other side of the highway. Accessed June 2, 2015, http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/133623/mark-ruwedel-cape-horn-near-celilo-interstate-84-after- carleton-watkins-american-1998/.

113 “Cape Horn near Celilo,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art website, accessed May 15, 2015, http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/283222. 65

very likely that Lange took this picture while standing or sitting on the top of the train, providing an elevated viewpoint and clear view of the land and track. It also might be reminiscent of single migrants, as they sometimes moved from harvest to harvest on the railroads and by hitchhiking.114 Lange’s railroad shot not only fits the suggested themes according to Stryker’s shooting script about the significance and symbolism of the railroad later on, but also evokes a type of personal associated more with the past, traveling by rail, indicating that the nation still is on the move.115 Similar to her Highway to the West, the barren fields were portrayed on the both side of the frame along the path.

The striking frontality and linearity are unequivocally visual; these intensify the impact of each image. Using the central and straight-back composition in the depiction of landscape also can be traced back as early as Meindert Hobbema’s The Avenue at

Middelharnis, 1689.116 [1-38] Hobbema, a Dutch landscape painter of the 17th century,

114 John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies (Berkeley, CA: Heyday, 2002), 35.

115 See Roy Stryker, “A Preliminary Shooting Script on the Railroad and their Place in the Life of America” in Cohen ed, The Likes of Us: America in the Eyes of the Farm Security Administration, 173–174. In his shoot script probably in 1940, Stryker states, “the railroad has been a part of the everyday affairs of a large proportion of the villages and towns in the United States for the past several decades…the railroad is now fast losing its place as a direct influence on the social habits of these people. The bus, the pleasure car and the truck are in so many towns and villages, relegating the ‘little red’ railroad stations to a memory.” Stryker seemed to be more interested in railroad as a place and its related objects. In contrast, Lange happened to capture the train as a vehicle in motion and the particular view from the locomotive.

116 As Malcolm Andrews asserts “Landscape pictures breed landscape pictures, and one can trace various typological genealogies in this genre,” this dissertation aims to revisit the visual representation of the road in America, including the ways in which the road is perceived as landscape. Different from other 66

depicted this scene with a local village and church in Middelharnis, South Holland. The view is accurate and has hardly changed since. Hobbema artfully composed the trees of the avenue receding to the center of the picture, which provided simplicity as well as majesty. The sharp recession of the tree line is juxtaposed with the low horizon and the open sky, with the local topographical detail of the village and church tower in the background, as well as the villagers in the Dutch dress; the picture implies a sense of local identity.117 As the country looks directly into town in the painting, civic pride, sense of place, and landscape as human history all are suggested in the time frame that the painting aims to capture. The painting hung in the Middelharnis council-chamber until 1822, and a copy hangs there to this day. The way roads were pictured in

17th-century Dutch landscape painting not only rendered the experiential quality of these roads as human signs but also their aesthetic quality.118

monarchies in Europe at the time, the Dutch Republic had been a major voice in shaping landscape as a genre. The depiction of the road in Dutch art not only serves as a precedent example for representing the national identity in Western art, but also sheds light in its iconography, audience, and cultural context. One might question why and how the viewer recognizes if a landscape is Dutch or American through its topographic and iconographic features. Regardless the difference of the medium, a painting and a photograph both evolve a series of decision making during the production, especially for composing and presenting a specific worldview. See Malcolm Andrews, Landscape and Western Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1.

117 “The Avenue at Middelharnis,” at the National Gallery, accessed, May 15, 2015, http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/meindert-hobbema-the-avenue-at-middelharnis.

118 Julie Berger Hochstrasser, “Inroads to Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape Painting,” in Natuur en Landschap in de Nederlandse Kunst 1500-1850/Nature and Landscape in Netherlandish Art 1500–1850, ed. Reindert Falkenburg, Jan de Jong, March Meadow, Bart Ramakers, Herman Roodenburg, Frits Scholten. 67

Both Watkins’s Cape Horn near Celilo, 1867 [1-36] and Hobbema’s The Avenue at Middelharnis, 1689 [1-38] shed light on key issues in the depiction of landscape and its relation to national ideology or local identity, as well as to the collective memory.

Watkins’s photograph encapsulates America’s eagerness for the expansion of its territory and for opportunity in the new frontier. Hobbema’s echoed a tradition and invitation of the road into the landscape as a constant theme, arising with the spread of travel during the 16th century and continuing throughout the 17th century, the Dutch “Golden Age.”119

To whatever extent the roads were for traveling, they demonstrated the new mobility in

Europe, as well as in the Netherlands in particular, especially the low horizon and open sky. The road in the landscape links us to the picture’s space.120 Their use of frontal and linear composition also strengthened the visual effect, which invites the viewer to participate in the scene. The choice was not merely formal, but delivered deeper aesthetic implications. Despite the historical and geographical difference, the compositional resemblance also touched on human presence and absence, as well as vastness of pictorial space. These issues and questions further apply to the examination and interpretation of

Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 1997, Deel 48 / Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 1997, vol. 48 (Zwolle, The Netherlands: Waanders Uitgevers, 1998), 210–211, 215.

119 Ibid., 215.

120 Ibid., 196–197. 68

Lange’s The Highway to the West, 1938. [1-34] Therefore, the road in Lange’s picture proposes the mobility of Americans in the Depression years. Migrant workers escaped from the past and the poor living condition in their home states, and sought opportunity based on the local needs of seasonal farmers in California. They either traveled by car or on foot on the westward highway. On the one hand, they had to be mobile when they got to California in order to work from farm to farm. On the other hand, they failed to be

“mobile” between communities as local Californians did not welcome these migrants but need the cheap labor. Lange’s picture, therefore, manifests the complexity of the mobility

(the act of travel) and the immobility (the social status) of highway migrants traveling to

California.121

From An American Exodus to John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath

It has been noted that Lange’s photographs were referenced in Ford’s The

Grapes of Wrath (1940), a film adapted from John Steinbeck’s novel of the same title, to

121 In 1935, there were 32% of out-of-state residents from Oklahoma in San Joaquin Valley, California, alongside 61% from the Southwest region in total, including Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Migrant workers mostly lived in the agricultural areas, in contrast to only 6% Oklahomans and 22% residents from Southwestern states who lived in Los Angeles. In 1935, these migrant works from Southwestern states usually received lower wage than local Californians in various kinds of industrial jobs. The same is true for the average wages for picking 100 pounds of cotton in 1934 and 1936. See James N. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 24, 83, and Tables 1.4, 1.5, 3.1. 69

lend visual authenticity.122 In this section, it is not the intent to repeat the comparative analysis between the Ford’s film and Steinbeck’s novel nor the novel and Lange’s photographs, but rather to reexamine the similarities and differences between film and photographs as they both function as visual representations based on similar social issues.

Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath has its problematic issues in film history.123 Its implied leftist social concern and criticism were not viewed favorably, especially with the outbreak of the World War II. When the film was released, the nation’s attention was turned to Hitler’s invasion in Europe, and as America prepared to enter the War, the nation also benefited from the demand for and production of supplies, armories, and vehicles, which invigorated the economy.124 Moreover, The Grapes of Wrath was not a

122 Colin Naylor ed., Contemporary Photographers, 580. Also, Gilles Mora and Beverly W. Brannan, FSA: The American Vision (New York: Abrams, 2006), 25. Mora notes Lange’s An American Exodus served as the central visual inspiration for the John Ford’s film The Grapes of Wrath. Also see Mary Jane Appel, “The Duplicate File: New Insights into the FSA” Archives of American Art Journal, 54:1, (2015), 16. Steinbeck asked the RA/FSA for help in research his novel in the mid-1930s. Stryker also sent 500 prints from the Duplicate File of the FSA photographs to Twentieth Century Fox, enabling Ford and his crew to ground the film not only based on Steinbeck’s novel but also the real situation documented by Stryker’s photographers.

123 Since many readers considered the novel politically radical, when a second unit was dispatched to the Southwest to film the Joads’ jalopy as it headed west, producer Darryl F. Zanuck began the production under the title Highway 66 in order to avoid possible protests. Ronald L Davis, John Ford: Hollywood’s Old Master (Norman OK: University of Oklahoma, 1995), 113.

124 One of the reasons the issue and the depiction of it were not favored was that the 1930s was sometimes considered “the Red Decade.” One of the forms of this radical sentiment was the growth of the American Communist party. The party was also a critical force in the union battles of the Depression era. Many intellectuals saw the Depression as evidence of the failure of capitalism, so that the nation needed a different economic and social order. See Alan Brinkley, “The Grapes of Wrath” in Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, ed. Ted Mico, et al., 226. 70

Western, the film genre for which Ford was justifiably famous. In addition, compared to his other films, The Grapes of Wrath was considered less “pure” Ford since it was an adaption from Steinbeck’s novel. Film critics seemed to overtly emphasize Ford’s personal career and style instead of the visual narrative and artistic value of the film itself.125 Films must be still judged as films, instead of as transformations of material from other media.126 Thus, a visual analysis between Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath and

Lange’s photographs from An American Exodus seems to be timely and crucial to examine how the migrant issue in California was documented.

Edwin Locke pointed out that Ford’s depiction of the land and environment was not as satisfactory as in The Grapes of Wrath. For example, the opening sequence in the movie did not provide enough feeling of the country or the people’s background such as the vast stretches of the Dust Bowl in contrast to the tiny houses or the notorious and iconic blowing dust. Even the roadside landscape of US 66, the route that the Joad family took for most of their journey, was under represented in the film.127 As film director Pare

125 Vivian C. Sobchack, “The Grapes of Wrath (1940): Thematic Emphasis through Visual Style,” in Peter C. Rollins, ed., Hollywood as Historian: American Film in a Cultural Context (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 1983), 70–71.

126 Warren G. French, Filmguide to The Grapes of Wrath (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1973), 21.

127 Sobchack, “The Grapes of Wrath (1940): Thematic Emphasis through Visual Style,” 76. To the matter 71

Lorentz commented, Ford did not seem to show his ambition in visualizing the living environment of the main characters as he had done in other films such as Stagecoach,

1939.128 Unlike Lange’s photographs in An American Exodus, a significant number of the scenes in The Grapes of Wrath were shot indoors, including inside the car and tent, which intensified the sense of limited space in its visual narrative and suggested the lack of land and freedom.129 In fact, most of the footage Ford shot on The Grapes of Wrath was filmed in the studio, indicated by his sparing use of close-ups and long shots.130

The date of publication of An American Exodus was close to the release date of

Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath. The time of shooting and editing the book, from 1935 to

1939, also overlapped with Steinbeck’s writing of his novel, 1936 to 1937. Despite the difference of medium in photo-essay, literature, and film, all three addressed the same social issue. Steinbeck based his story on a selection of visual and textual materials from the RA/FSA staff and photographers. In addition, before the novel was published, he first

of US 66 being slightly underrepresented, Warren French arrived at the following figures, Highway 66 was covered for 155 pages/25.5% in the novel, while 27 minutes/21% in the film. See French, Filmguide to The Grapes of Wrath, 23. Ford also shot the US 66 sign several times to provide information of the geographical location during the journey. For Lange, the geographical information often was provided through the captions of her photographs.

128 Sobchack, “The Grapes of Wrath (1940): Thematic Emphasis through Visual Style,” 76.

129 Ibid., 77.

130 Davis, John Ford: Hollywood’s Old Master, 115. Also see French, Filmguide to The Grapes of Wrath, 33. 72

wrote a series of articles titled “California’s Harvest Gypsies” from October 5-12, 1936 in the San Francisco News. These articles derived from his visit to the “Hoovervilles” and

“Little Oklahomas” in rural California. In 1938, these articles, along with Steinbeck’s newly written epilogue, “Starvation under the Orange Trees,” were compiled as a pamphlet: Their Blood is Strong. Later, in 1988, these were reissued under the title, The

Harvest Gypsies, which also included selected photographs by Dorothea Lange.131

Although Ford claimed he had never read Steinbeck’s novel, he seemed to reference Lange’s photographs when he adapted the novel into film. Therefore, Gregg

Toland’s cinematography for Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath, in a way, resembled the photographs of Evans or Lange due to Toland’s style of chiaroscuro and focus.132 The visual quality in The Grapes of Wrath is more “popularized,” rather than realistic or documentary as in the photographs of Evans or Lange.133 Steinbeck believed that the

131 Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies. Brian E. Railsback, Michael J. Meyer, eds. A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), 147–148. Also see James R. Swenson, “Focusing on the Migrant: The Contextualization of Dorothea Lange’s Photographs of the John Steinbeck Committee” in A Political Companion to John Steinbeck (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2013), 196–197.

132 John Ford told George Bluestone that he never read the novel. See French, Filmguide to The Grapes of Wrath, 21. Stuart Samuels, Visions of Light—The Art of Cinematography, CA: Image Entertainment, Inc. 20th century Fox Home Entertainment, 1998.

133 Sobchack, “The Grapes of Wrath (1940): Thematic Emphasis through Visual Style,” 85. The film serves a purpose for the audience to follow the narrative during some 2 hours in the theater. It also is designed to embody the storyline in the novel, translating the drama and human emotion among the characters. Unlike the Ford’s film, Evans’s photographs are often aestheticized, they are thoughtful analytical views of ordinary life and vernacular landscape. For Lange, she had a more critical agenda on this social issue to 73

Great Depression had exposed the hollowness of the “American Dream” of individualism and material success. The despair and the anger of the novel seemed to be muted in

Ford’s film. To both Steinbeck and Ford, neither despair nor rage could convey the essence of the Great Depression adequately, yet as the novel and film suggest, the true lesson of the times was a community of human spirit --- family. Different from the way

Taylor and Lange contextualize the issue, the novel and the film appeared “romantic” to their many critics.134

Although both Steinbeck and Ford referred to Lange’s photographs and dealt with the same issues, each of them had an individual nature related to difference of medium.135 No matter how much Steinbeck and Ford relied on the historical and visual evidence, their works still were fiction based on facts. Despite that characters in the evoke the public opinion and governmental support through a sociological approach. The audience and medium shape the difference of styles between the cinematography of Ford’s film and the photographs of Evans and Lange.

134 See Alan Brinkley, “The Grapes of Wrath” in Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, ed. Ted Mico, et al., 224, 226–227.

135 What the RA/FSA photographers, especially Lange, had worked on for years, focusing public attention on the needs of the migrant workers, was accomplished almost overnight in the spring of 1939 by the success of Steinbeck’s single novel. While Lange was the first to photograph the migratory workers, and Steinbeck was the first novelist of importance to write about the same topic, there was no correspondence between them in those first years of work. Yet, when Steinbeck began to work on the novel, he studied RA/FSA’s photo file and got to know the work of Lange and others well. See Milton Meltzer, Dorothea Lange: A Photographer’s Life, 202–203. In 1939, relations between Lange and Steinbeck became strained when Steinbeck refused to write a preface for American Exodus. Steinbeck wrote to his agent, Elizabeth Otis: “She is awful mad at me…All this off the record. I’m pretty sore at her too.” Swenson, “Focusing on the Migrant: The Contextualization of Dorothea Lange’s Photographs of the John Steinbeck Committee” in A Political Companion to John Steinbeck, 221. Original source, Steinbeck to Otis, July 30, 1939, John Steinbeck Collection, Stanford University Special Collections. 74

movie seem to be alive and real to the audience, they were actors. The scenarios were staged as if they were authentic. On the contrary, in Lange’s photographs, the migrant families were real victims of the Depression, not actors on a soundstage, and they were struggling with their new lives in California. Moreover, unlike the novel, the texts in An

American Exodus were usually Taylor’s words, issued from sociological and historical perspectives, and the captions were mostly the testimony of the subjects who either

Lange had photographed or both Lange and Taylor had interviewed. Hence, in An

American Exodus, these words function as either scholarly commentary or true witness, different from the lines in Steinbeck’s novel or Ford’s movie.

Ford was preoccupied with straightforward, frontal, and eye-level scenes.136

Lange, however, did not use the eye level shot as often as Ford did. Lange sometimes took her photographs from an angle lower than the subject’s face, providing the grandeur look of the migrant, and showing more sympathy and respect. The figures in Lange’s pictures were real people traveling on the road, not knowing what to do at present or what the future might hold, showing insecurity and anxiety. More importantly, based on the captions in An American Exodus, people even returned to Oklahoma from California

136 French, Filmguide to The Grapes of Wrath, 33. 75

because they were not well treated in California.137 While the cinematographer Toland arranged more eye level shots in order to display the facial expression of the characters in detail, enhancing the drama. Lange’s diagonal composition and inclusion of the belongings of the family offers a pictorial drama with emotional anxiety. [1-39, 1-40] As is essential in feature films, Toland had to focus on the protagonists, and give the viewer as much expression and information about the characters and the story as possible. The fictional reality was based on the performance of the actors in the film, whereas Lange was portraying and witnessing people in their real life. Therefore, the sense of truth and reality, and how they were depicted, became interesting and intriguing.

In comparing the photographic and filmic image, the photograph was capable of becoming a kind of fetish, a fixed image and a fixed object, while film is a virtual and immaterial project, closer in structure to voyeurism in its orchestration of the viewer’s desire through the fullness of its unfolding.138 The reading of Lange’s photographs and photo book allowed the audience to become the master of looking, with more fluidity and freedom to select what, when, and for how long to look at a particular image. Viewing of

137 The caption says, “People aren’t friendly there like they are here, but they appreciated the cheap labor coming out. When there’s a rush for work they’re friendlier than at other times.” Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, An American Exodus, 60.

138 David Campany, Photography and Cinema (London: Reatkion Books, 2008), 11. 76

the film is determined in advance by the filmmaker; no matter how long the film, the reception of the sequence is enlarged by sounds, movements, and so forth. Hence, on one hand, the public has a free rewriting time in looking at Lange’s photographs and even understanding the social issue. On the other, the audience has an imposed reading time in watching Ford’s film.139

Because of medium and purpose of narrative, the lighting in Lange’s photographs is also different from that in Ford’s film. Unlike some fellow photographers, such as Arthur Rothstein and Russell Lee, Lange seldom used artificial light during her project. Although she carried a flash with her in the field, she opted not to photograph in settings that required additional light. Yet, she still used reflectors to throw more light on her subject, to avoid harsh shadows, and to retain the quality of the existing light.140 On the contrary, Ford and Toland appropriated the blackness in their film, amplifying a sense of theatrical lighting, turning the urgent situation of the Joad family into aesthetic imagery.141 In the film, many of the scenes in the house and tent, as well as in the dark

139 Christian Metz, “Photography and Fetish” in October, vol.34 (Autumn, 1985), 81.

140 Karin E. Becker, Dorothea Lange and the Documentary Tradition, (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 72.

141 Sobchack, “The Grapes of Wrath (1940): Thematic Emphasis through Visual Style,” 83. 77

night could not have been made through Lange’s lens due to the insufficient light. Nearly half of the action takes place at night or under dimly lit conditions, allowing Ford to exploit the possibilities of spot lighting since the migrants could only afford inexpensive lighting such as candles and oil lamps. Ford’s compositions might even be reminiscent of the striking religious paintings by seventeenth-century French painter Georges de la

Tour.142 Ford and Toland sometimes provide a close-up chiaroscuro of the leading character in the room with dramatic light and dark shadow in contrast on his face, intensifying the psychological and emotional impact. This visual style is clearly different from the way Lange photographed her subjects.

Despite many differences between Ford’s film and Lange’s photographs, several incidents and scenes are still comparable. As depicted in the Ford’s movie, Lange also captured a scene of changing the tire in “A family with 7 children from Paris, Arkansas, on the highway near Webber Falls, Oklahoma, June 27, 1938,” which appeared on page

53 in An American Exodus. [1-41, 42] Lange and Taylor also caption this image with the family’s own words: “We’re bound for Kingfisher, Oklahoma, to work in the wheat, and

Lubbock, Texas, to work in the cotton. We’re trying not to, but we’ll be in California

142 French, Filmguide to The Grapes of Wrath, 34. 78

yet.”143 The last phrase demonstrates the feeling of powerlessness of these migrant workers as they wandered from here to there searching for opportunity. Most of them moved westward, which echoed the arc of the book, as the last section is entitled “Last

West,” suggesting this is the last hope and final destination. As the male figures of the family changed the tire, Lange took a picture of the children in the wagon from the back of the car, portraying the characterless family sitting on their belongings waiting as the repair took place. The children are all shoeless. The blankets and mattresses they sit on seem to be reminiscent of the photograph of covered wagon that Lange selected for the cover jacket. Lange’s realistic witness is somehow different from Ford’s depiction of a similar incident in the film. As the Joad family stopped and changed the tire in Ford’s film, the adults also took a rest and talked, as the kids wandered and played around them.

[1-41] As he panned the camera, Ford gave more details of the process of changing the tire and included part of the roadside landscape in the background in the frame. In Ford’s depiction, however, even though the road was still harsh for the Joads, they were a bit more at ease compared with the family in Lange’s image.

Furthermore, both Ford’s film and Lange’s photo-essay suggested the conflicts

143 Lange and Taylor, An American Exodus, 53. 79

between the Okies and the local community in California. In the film, as the Joads drove on the road looking for a place to stay, they were told by the local folks that no more

Okies would be welcomed in town. In addition, Tom Joad had a fight due to his friend

Casey being beaten by the guard. When Tom was a worker in the government camp, there was a rumor about the possible turmoil led by the “reds,” presumably the local conservative radicals. In fact, some of the extremists antagonized public opinion in order to keep their town from the influx of the poor Okies. The guards in the film perhaps matched Lange’s inclusion of an image of the policemen and security personnel by Otto

Hagel in the section of “Last West” in her An American Exodus on page 138.144 [1-43]

Hagel captured a line of the local armed people standing on the other side of the road guarding the entrance of the farm during the strike. The tension between the incoming

Okies and the local Californians were both depicted but with slight differences in the film and in the photo-essay. Though the novel is fiction, many readers accept it as fact. Some

Californians are furious with the novel because it brands California farmers as treating these refugees from Dust Bowl cruelly.145

144 About 50 photographs in An American Exodus are taken by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration, only 8 images are taken by other photographers. See Lange and Taylor, An American Exodus, 158.

145 Frank J. Taylor, “California’s ‘Grapes of Wrath,’” Forum CII (November 1939), 232–238 in The 80

Last but not least, Ford framed a scene that is similar to the empty highway that

Lange and many other migrants and travelers encountered during their trip. The barren field on both sides of the road suggested the wasteland or virgin land waiting to be conquered, while the sublimity and vastness of the land were depicted as well. [1-44] The linear perspective as the primary visual format was iconic and identical in Lange’s photograph and Ford’s film. Yet, Ford included a car in his scene suggesting the presence and the itinerary of the Joad family. The visual reception and perception of Lange’s photograph and Ford’s film work reciprocally. As Ford might be aware of Lange’s pictorial content and style, Lange provided the complicated context of the social issue that Ford was also delineating, Ford’s mise-en-scène and his depiction of the car and family in motion helped the public understand the journey more easily.

As people read Lange’s photographs alongside Taylor’s text, they also knew how the issue was common and dire in California. Between the middle of 1935 and May 1939,

300,000 migrant workers, an average of above 6,000 a month, were counted entering the borders of California by automobile. More than 90% were white people. About 25% of

Grapes of Wrath: Text and Criticism, ed. Peter Lisca (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 457–468. By implication, it seemed that Californians meant to lure a surplus of workers westward to depress wages, deputize peace officers to hound the migrants, burned the squatters’ camp, stomped down gardens and destroyed surplus foods. They allowed migrants work for starvation wages, children to starve and mothers to bear babies unattended in squalor. 81

them had left from Oklahoma, and another 25% had departed from Texas, Arkansas, and

Missouri.146 The unique nature of California agriculture required a large number of migrants, and required that they move about. For example, a large peach orchard that only required the work of 20 men year-round, might need as many as 2,000 for a brief time for picking and packing.147

Before entering California, the migrants suffered from difficult relationships with their landowners, a severe drought, and tractors taking over some of the labor.

Automobiles and highways became essential to allow them to travel and make a living as transient agricultural laborers. In Lange’s picture, without the presence of any car, the viewer was brought into the scene as a traveler on the highway. It also presents an infinite, indefinable expanse. Although the film follows the structure of the novel, by reversing the sequence and altering the scene, the tone of the final third of the film is changed. At the end, the Joads set out in search of work once more.148 In Ford’s frame, with the car of the Joad family, the audience is encouraged to follow the life and journey of the Joads on the road. It might also suggest that progress has been made. No end of the road was

146 Lange and Taylor, An American Exodus, 144.

147 Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies, 20.

148 French, Filmguide to The Grapes of Wrath, 22. 82

shown in either case. In other words, no destination was foreseen, and the destiny remained uncertain as well.

Conclusion

In one of his personal notes, Evans wrote: “[I] mean never [to] make photographic statements for the government or do photographic chores for gov or anyone in gov, no matter how powerful—this is pure record not propaganda. The value and, if you like, even the propaganda for the government lies in the record itself which in the long run will prove an intelligent and farsighted thing to have done. NO POLITICS whatever.”149 Evans was perhaps most prolific during his short RA/FSA years. His primary focus was on being artistic instead of political. His approach was more modernistic and formalistic.150 On the contrary, Lange tried to produce “sociological photography,” not only providing photographs with sociological text and context, but also

149 Walker Evans, Walker Evans at Work, 112.

150 Evans and Lange both strongly displayed their style and beliefs in their photographs. The relationship between Stryker and Evans in the end was not a happy one, worse than the one between Stryker and Lange. Stryker became increasingly impatient with Evans because of his small production, general disinterest in photographs to fill the file, and lack of understanding or interest in the bureaucratic problems in Washington DC. Many years later, Evans recalled: “Stryker did not understand that a photograph might be something more than just an item to file away. He missed the point of the eye…Stryker did not have any idea what an artist was and it was unfortunate that he had one like me around. I was excessively independent by temperament and had a hard time with him because of this. Stryker was shrewd enough to make use of the talent I had, but were born to clash.” O’Neal, A Vision Shared: A Classic Portrait of America and its People, 1935–1943, 61. 83

believing photography could have a social purpose. She always brought her humanist concern to her work, just like the letterhead of her studio in 2515 Gough Street, San

Francisco headed “Photographs of People.”

By the time Lange and Taylor published An American Exodus, Lange’s Migrant

Mother, 1936 already was circulated widely and well known to the public. The visual format of the frontal, linear, and straight-on empty highway is simple but sophisticated. It has its formality and aesthetic, as well as historical significance. Through a comparative study of Lange’s photographs and Ford’s film, one gets a better sense of how the highway migrants were documented and visualized in different mediums. It also shows how reading one could benefit looking at the other.

More frequent highway travels led to the development of roadside services, including stores and gas stations. Evans purposely captured several of these themes as part of the automobile landscape and as a microcosm of the American culture. Likewise, as in Steinbeck’s original novel and Ford’s film, whenever the Joads stopped their car on the road, they had also to “feed the car before they fed themselves.”151 Thus, roadside stores and gas stations became essential subjects to embody the visual experience of the

151 Interrante, “The Road to Autopia: The Automobile and the Spatial Transformation of American Culture” in The Automobile and American Culture, ed. David L. Lewis and Laurence Goldstein, 103. 84

American highway. Automobiles and highways also were essential for migrant workers to travel all the way to California, to move from place to place in rural areas of the state, and to find and fulfill temporary work.

Lange’s interest in portraying the roadside billboard is somehow different from

Evans’s version. Lange consistently used the roadside billboard as a sign suggesting the failure of the promised American Dream. Evans, however, was less critical as he captured his views in a more intellectual and distanced way, representing the “physiognomy of the nation.” For Evans, the prevalence of the automobile, whether in an urban or rural setting, had become an emergent scene to him. For Lange, the classical scene of an empty highway also became an iconic view not only for the photographer and the viewers, but also for travelers and migrant workers on the road. The linear perspective Lange adopted not only recalled the visual format that appeared earlier in American history and landscape, but also recalled its usage in the development of landscape painting. Lange’s composition also made iconographical connections to the visual narrative of the road film as exemplified in Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath. Hence, Lange, as well as Evans, established a crucial visual legacy to their contemporaries and to the generations of photographers and public that followed. Their pictures of automobiles and people they 85

encountered on the road became fundamental in interpreting and defining the collective visual memory of the American highway. 86

CHAPTER 2

ON THE ROAD IN THE 1950S:

RETHINKING ROBERT FRANK’S THE AMERICANS

In 1955, the Swiss-born Robert Frank was the first European photographer to receive the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.1 Frank utilized part of the grant to purchase a used car, a 1950 Ford Business Coupe, and then traveled across America in

1955 and 1956 primarily on his own. The photographs taken during this cross-country road trip became the body of his monumental photo-book The Americans (1958/1959).

Robert Delpire first published this photo-book, accompanied by sociologically-tinged text, in Paris in 1958 under the title, Les Américains. The series of photographs was published in New York that next year; now the only text was brief captions and an introduction by

Jack Kerouac, the author of On the Road (1957) and a seminal figure of the Beat

Generation.

This chapter examines the road photographs in The Americans. My discussion first centers on how Frank responded to the existing conventions of documenting the

1 Edward Weston had been the first recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 1937. 87

American automobile, highway, and roadside landscapes, particularly the visual legacies established by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. Unlike Evans, who mainly visited the eastern and southern states, or Lange, who focused on the southwestern region and

California in the 1930s, Frank conducted a series of road trips encompassing the entire

United States. By examining Frank’s photographs and comparing them with photographs by Evans and Lange, the formal and contextual connections and differences between the photographs in these two decades, the 1930s and the 1950s, become evident. Further analysis of many automobile and highway related images from The Americans explores and explains how Frank documented and defined postwar American society through his road trips. Through Frank’s lens, images of a variety of scenes and issues not only demonstrate visual appeal but also illustrate significant sociological meanings in postwar

America. Moreover, in his series of photographs, Frank consciously selected to shoot a variety of images from daily life—jukeboxes, drive-in theaters, highway accidents, and funerals and roadside crosses—as well as scenes suggesting racial difference and segregation. It is crucial to notice what had changed or remained in terms of visual and material culture from prewar to postwar America. The primary focus of this chapter is to investigate the ways in which road photography continues and transforms as a genre by 88

representing corresponding themes and contemporary social issues, analyzing both stylistic and historical changes.

Frank’s automobile, highway, and roadside-related images in The Americans carried on the earlier tradition while also developing new themes and styles. Besides responding to the photographic legacies of Evans and Lange, Frank evoked the tradition of traveling and commenting on the New World as a European intellectual, an outsider to

American society. This tradition had begun with Alexis de Tocqueville, who published

Democracy in America (1835, 1840) based on his observation and commentary of the nation during his travels.

Frank was born in Zurich in 1924 to Jewish parents, and had been denied Swiss citizenship until 1945 because his German-born father was stateless. Therefore, Frank was by temperament and upbringing a consummate outsider.2 In the Guggenheim

Fellowship application, Frank stated:

What I have in mind, then is observation and record of what one naturalized American finds to see in the United States that signifies the kind of civilization born here and spreading elsewhere. Incidentally, it is fair to assume that when an observant American

2 Exhibition label, Robert Frank, Celebrating Photography at the National Gallery of Art: Recent Gifts, visited February, 7, 2016, on view from November 1, 2015 to March, 13, 2016, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. 89

travels abroad his eye will see freshly; and that the reverse may be true when a European eye looks at the United States.3

Regardless, Frank had come to the United States as an émigré at the age of 23. Although, when he would later become naturalized as American, skepticism, and critique are fundamental to his book. In the winter of 1955, right in the middle of his cross-country road trip, Frank wrote his parents from Los Angeles:

I am working very hard not just to photograph, but to give an opinion in my photos of America…I am photographing how Americans live, have fun, eat, drive cars, work, etc. America is an interesting country, but there is a lot here that I do not like and that I would never accept. I am also trying to show this in my photos.4

Therefore, Frank wanted to show a personal and complicated way of defining postwar

America.

In the introduction of The Americans, Jack Kerouac questions “whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin,” because “Frank is always taking pictures of jukeboxes and coffins.”5 Later in this chapter, I will argue it is the visual treatment, the metaphor,

3 Anne Wilkes Tucker, Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1986), 20.

4 Anne Wilkes Tucker, Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia, 28.

5 Jack Kerouac, “Introduction” in The Americans, (New York: SCALO, 2000), 5. 90

and the juxtaposition of these two images that creates the complexity of The Americans.

Frank provided a dialectical dichotomy of general and specific in The Americans, not only as evidenced in pleasure and entertainment in general, such as the jukebox, television set, and drive-in theater, but also in peril and death, such as highway accidents and roadside crosses. Frank’s images are not only visually compelling, but also manifest materialistic implications. As Sarah Greenough has argued, Frank demonstrated “a culture deeply riddled by racism, alienation, and isolation, one with little civility and much violence. He depicted a society numbed by a seemingly endless array of consumer goods that promised many choices but offered no real satisfaction.”6 I will examine how

Frank encountered and engaged with the social and political aspects of America in the

1950s, including issues such as racial differences and segregation, and his own experience of being treated like an alien during his trip. His book is about the road trip; meanwhile, it is also about what he observed and experienced in relation to postwar

America. I will revisit the first image and the last one in the book to address how Frank’s work traverses from faceless, nameless Americans to his personal experience. Last but not least, although not included in the book, an image of a roadside scene of Hoover Dam

6 Sarah Greenough, “Introduction” in Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2009), expanded edition, xix. 91

helps us understand Frank’s keen vision throughout the trip and reconsider the commentary he intended to make in regard to the ways in which America was treated over time.

In Dialogue with the Tradition

For the Guggenheim Fellowship, Frank photographed what he encountered on the road in 767 rolls of films and 27,000 frames.7 He selected 83 prints to include in his important volume, The Americans. Since the English version of the book has each image on the right and a blank page on the left, the photographs are meant to be read individually but also as a sequence as we turn to the next page, a format reminiscent of

Evans’s American Photographs (1938). As Evans used visual clues within the pictures to lead the viewer tangentially from one page to another, as well as the two sequences of four images on automobile landscapes in American Photographs, Frank responded to and utilized a similar sequential effect throughout The Americans.8 Frank’s The Americans shares common subject matter, structure, and even montage quality with Evans’s

American Photographs. For the film montage, each sequential element is perceived not

7 Greenough, “Introduction” in Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, xix.

8 Joshua Chuang, “When the Messenger is the Medium: The Making of Walker Evans’s American Photographs and Robert Frank’s The Americans” in Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (2006): 113. 92

only next to the other, but more importantly on top of each other.9 Inherited from

American Photographs, Frank further created something more fluid and integrated because of the subtle repetitions and variations connecting his photographs.10

It was Evans who insisted that Frank apply for the Guggenheim Fellowship and wrote one of his recommendations.11 When Frank started the road trip across America in

1955, he packed two cameras, many boxes of film, French brandy, an AAA road atlas, and one book as a guidebook of another kind, Evans’s American Photographs.12 Frank

9 Peter Galassi, Robert Frank in America (Stanford: Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University, 2014), 32. Galassi used an early segment in American Photographs, pls. 7 to 10, to explain the structure of the book by delineating a larger picture of the context, automobile culture. For Sergei Eisenstein’s analysis on montage and how it relates to reading Evans’s work, see the original discussion in Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs: Images as History: Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), 259; and its chapter 5 “A Book Nearly Anonymous,” devoted to American Photographs. Trachtenberg used the opening sequence of the first six photographs in American Photographs to explicate how each picture speaks to one another and how the sequence articulates the design of the direction of an overarching structure with many repeated emblems in the book. Trachtenberg, “Walker Evans’s America” in Observations: Essays on Documentary Photography, ed. David Featherstone, (Carmel: The Friends of Photography, 1984), 60–66.

10 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 33. Original discussion, Sarah Greenough, Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans, 183.

11 Evans’s respect for Frank was a matter of public record. Evans feared that Frank would give up and return to Europe forever if he did not receive some kind of solid support in America. See Stuart Alexander, The Criticism of Robert Frank’s The Americans (University of Arizona, 1986), 27. Also, Tod Papageorge, Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An Essay on Influence (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1981), 3. In addition to Evans, there also were recommendations from Alexey Brodovitch, Frank’s former supervisor and art director at Harper’s Bazaar; Alexander Lieberman, art director at Vogue; Meyer Schapiro, professor at Columbia University; Edward Steichen, curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art. See Tucker, Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia, 9.

12 Accessed August 17, 2015, “The Man Who Saw America,” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/magazine/robert-franks-america.html. Greenough noticed that Frank had a copy of Evans’s American Photographs on his worktable in Los Angeles from a photograph. See Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 128, fig.5. 93

was obviously aware of Evans’s subjects as a reference for documenting America in a different decade. Frank considered Evans’s photographs as the proper influence, but he also knew what he did not want in his own photographs.13

Evans and Frank shared many themes and subjects but with a different approach and style. During the 1930s, Evans usually photographed with a large 8-by-10 view camera, which required a tripod; this was especially true during his affiliation with the

FSA in order to provide better quality photographs for reproduction. Frank, however, used a 35 mm handheld Leica, a much smaller camera that allowed for more spontaneity and mobility while shooting.14 With the handheld Leica—he would sometimes even

“shoot from the hip”—Frank developed a looser, and more casual and gestural style; it was all about the moment.15

Frank also intended a more personal commentary of the visual and material culture in postwar America. In American Photographs, Evans had established his style of a direct and sun-lit setting, producing a dignified sense of place; whereas Frank created

13 John Morris et al., Photography within the Humanities (Danbury, NH: Addison House, 1977), 54.

14 Frank adopted the Leica in late 1948, setting aside the larger 2 1/4-by- 2 1/4 inch Rolleiflex camera. Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 13.

15 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 123. Also noted in Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 30. For “Shoot from the hip,” George Cotkin, “The Photographer in the Beat-Hipster Idiom: Robert Frank’s The Americans,” American Studies, vol. 26, no. 1 (Spring 1985), 21. 94

an obscure, shadowed, oblique feeling of alienation in The Americans employing a snapshot aesthetic. In his exhibition and essay, Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An

Essay on Influence, Tod Papageorge discussed the influence of Evans’s work on Frank.16

Frank’s documentation was as much about his personal experience as it was about the subject matter. His stylistic immediacy, spontaneity, and compositional anarchy of his pictures also changed the expectations about the photograph, allowing new ways of seeing for subsequent generations of photographers. Thus, The Americans is considered crucially instrumental in shaping the snapshot aesthetic.17

As an émigré from Switzerland, Frank might have been astonished and doubtful when he encountered a common scene that became Covered Car—Long Beach,

California. [2-1] The subject was reminiscent of Evans’s Westchester, New York, Farm

House, 1931. [1-13] The two photographs have similarities: showing an automobile parked in front of a house in an ordinary landscape, yet they imply nuanced social and historical meanings. As noted in Chapter 1, by 1930, there were already 26.7 million automobiles registered in America, 1 for every 4.5 people. Evans documented the

16 See Tod Papageorge’s Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An Essay on Influence (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1981).

17 Philip Gefter, Photography after Frank (New York: Aperture, 2009), 9. The Americans might even be considered as the apotheosis of the snapshot and the birth of the snapshot aesthetic. 95

growing presence of automobiles in urban, residential, and rural settings. For Evans, automobile landscapes already were inevitable subjects for depicting America. Although new car sales declined 75% from 4.5 to 1.1 million during the Depression, car registrations only decreased by 10%, which suggested that many people were reluctant to give up car ownership and purchased used cars. By contrast, the economy was booming in the 1950s, and over 7.4 million new cars were sold in America in 1955.18 Frank’s

Covered Car echoes Evans’s shot of similar composition and the prevalence of automobile in ordinary life and in the vernacular landscape. Although it could suggest that a car was no longer working and being protected until it could be repaired; here, it symbolizes how Americans took meticulous care of their cars, even to the extent of covering them to prevent scratches, sun, dust, rain, and any other harm.19 The photograph also provides a stereotypical image of southern California, a place of

18 1955 was the peak of new cars sales, accessed September, 18, 2015, http://www.statista.com/statistics/199974/us-car-sales-since-1951/

19 Frank’s Covered Car is immediately followed by an image of a covered body at a highway accident. The resemblance and contrast in this particular sequence will be examined later in this chapter. Frank photographed more than one covered car in Los Angeles area, including another Covered Car, Long Beach, California, 1955–1956, in which the car was depicted in a similar composition and parked in a neighborhood alike but near an intersection. Accessed July, 2, 2016, https://artblart.com/tag/covered-car-long-beach/ Frank also photographed another covered car in his Malibu, California, 1956, mistakenly dated 1958 in Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 155and on the website. In this case, the car is covered in a camouflage tarpaulin and parked at the beach. Accessed July, 2, 2016, http://cantorcollections.stanford.edu/VieO9570?sid=1904&x=20489 96

sunshine and palm trees, and most importantly, automobiles.20

Considering the socio-economic hardships in postwar Europe, this scene and its material implications were clearly new and problematic for Frank. Regardless of the shared subject matter between Frank and Evans, this common scene actually suggests an uncommon message about how the automobile became part of daily life and even an object of fetishism in visual culture in America. Frank’s picture represents the consistent view of cars as common objects in American life and landscape. In Evans’s picture, it is an older version Model T Ford, likely manufactured before 1926, judging by its design, while in Frank’s, the car is covered and cannot be identified. Nonetheless, the concealment of the car’s identity lends a sacred air to this materialistic object. According to Jonathan Day, it could recall a sarcophagus or an altar covered by an altar cloth; the two palm trees create the impression of a portico and the door at the left could read as a church tabernacle with an altar lamp above the door frame.21

In The Americans Frank sought to document the regional and racial diversity of

20 For the significance and representativeness of palm trees, Pop and Conceptual artist Ed Ruscha produced and dedicated his photographic series, A Few Palm Trees, 1971, to the Los Angeles landscape.

21 Jonathan Day, Robert Frank’s The Americans: The Art of Documentary Photography (Bristol; Chicago: Intellect, 2011), 62. At the presentation of my dissertation project, my colleague Kaelin Jewell also had similar reading of covered car as a sarcophagus, March 17, 2016, Temple University. 97

the nation. He also tried to capture the driving experience itself. In U.S. 91, Leaving

Blackfoot, Idaho, [2-2] Frank allowed two Native American hitchhikers to drive his car while he took photographs of them. It was easier for Frank to shoot from inside the car than for Evans or Lange due to the smaller size of camera he used.22 Hitchhiking became common during the Great Depression because it was the most affordable method of traveling, a motif in one of the earliest road movies, It Happened One Night, 1934.

Hitchhiking also became popular for the Beat generation, as Jack Kerouac detailed a nearly three thousand mile hitch-hiking in 1952, traveling from North Carolina to

California.23 While two Indian hitchhikers might need to travel to somewhere but did not own a car or could not afford driving, Frank also might want them as company because he was traveling alone at the time. As Frank tried to focus more on the social inequality in his project, these hitchhikers became a fitting subject.24

22 Evans used a variety of cameras, including a 35 mm. He sometimes took photographs of the roadside landscape from inside the car, such as two photographs of Roadside Scene, Vicinity of Macon, Georgia, 1935, Walker Evans Archive, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number 1994.253.433.14 and 1994.53.433.17. Among the FSA photographers, Russell Lee also used a 35 mm camera and once took photographs from the back seat inside the moving automobile on the highway in Bexar County, Texas while his wife Doris was driving. See FSA Collection at the Library of Congress, LC-USF33-012640-M1~M5 and LC-USF33-012641-M1~M2.

23 See Jack Kerouac, Book of Sketches, 1952–1957 (New York: Penguin Books, 2006) Accessed June 28, 2016, http://www.beatdom.com/the-beat-generation-and-travel-2/

24 In terms of Frank’s socio-economic commentary on traveling, U.S. 91, Leaving Blackfoot, Idaho seems to be a stark contrast to En Route from New York to Washington, Club Car in The Americans. Frank photographed En Route from New York to Washington, Club Car for an earlier assignment from Fortune for 98

During his travels, Frank kept a note attached to the shade above the driver’s seat that had been written for him by Dorothea Lange; although it is not clear what exactly she said, her message contained several reminders on how to take good photographs on the road.25 In addition to Evans, Lange was another photographer Frank admired.26

Lange built her visual legacy through photographing migrant workers on the highway in the 1930s, which later were used in her volume, An American Exodus: A

Record of Human Erosion (1939). At first glance, Frank’s U.S. 285, New Mexico appears nearly identical to Lange’s famous Highway to the West, 1938.27 [2-3; 1-34] Both photographs were taken in the middle of the road. The striking formality and linearity strengthen the visual effect and serve as an invitation to the viewer’s participation. Lange, however, framed the scene horizontally, whereas Frank did it vertically. In Lange’s photograph, the barren fields on both sides of the highway suggest the road as an

a story on an express train called the Congressional that shuttled businessmen and powerbrokers between New York and Washington, the two most important cities in the nation. Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 18.

25 Frank shared this information with his curator friend Philip Brookman. Philip Brookman, conversation with the author, July 31, 2015.

26 Morris et al., Photography within the Humanities, 65.

27 Elliott Erwitt also captured the scene in “35 mm Images from a Moving Car,” US Camera, September, 1954, 52–55. Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 40. Galassi also speculates that Ansel Adams’s depiction of such a theme, Desert Road, Nevada, c. 1960 might have been made after he read Frank’s The Americans. 99

intolerable and ineluctable trial for migrants in pursuit of the Promised

Land—California—as described in John Steinbeck’s novel and John Ford’s adapted film,

The Grapes of Wrath. Yet, for the migrants the journey was filled with uncertainty, and promise seemed to be illusory. In contrast to Lange’s symmetrical setting, Frank used the center line to slightly skew his composition. More importantly, he captured a car approaching threateningly as an imminent peril.28 The title of Frank’s photograph, like those of Walker Evans, served only to identify the image but little else can be gathered from it. Lange’s image, as described in her American Exodus, implies one direction: west, where most migrants headed, with its promises of possible redemption at the journey’s end. Frank’s image, on the contrary, contains no sign of redemption, but anxiety and alienation of the unknown.29 With traffic in both directions, it diminishes the dominance of moving westward and suggests more of a sense of wandering.30 Apart from Lange’s context of highway migration in the Great Depression, the empty highway here manifests

28 Marilyn Laufer, In Search of America: Photography from the Road, 1936–1976 (Ph.D. diss., Washington University, 1992), 194.

29 Ibid.

30 By definition, U.S. 285 is a north-south highway. In New Mexico, it connects Santa Fe and Roswell. See “American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials database,” accessed July, 5, 2016, http://nchrp20-7-228.com/USRoute.aspx. In her Americans Exodus, Lange included Highway to the West, taken on U.S. 54 in southern New Mexico, and another identical scene, U.S. 80, New Mexico, both emphasizing the westward direction. Sam Stourdzé, An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion (Paris: J.M. Place, 1999), 65, 84. 100

Frank’s wanderlust as the quintessence of the Beat Generation and the American psyche of restlessness and mobility.

By reviewing the contact sheet, it is clear that Frank took several shots of this iconic highway scene. He took three from the driver’s seat and then stepped out of the car standing, even crouching, in the middle of the highway in order to capture a clearer shot of the road surface. He took several shots from different levels and standpoints to find the best visual effect, especially the placement of the center line. The portrait format and lifting the horizon line upward gives the road slightly greater prominence and more of a dynamic pull.31

Born and raised in Switzerland, it is safe to assume that when Frank was on his cross-country road trip, the long, straight, empty, and open highway, as appeared in his

U.S. 285, [2-3] and similar to what Lange and others had seen, must have been new and compelling to him. Frank was not alone. Two decades earlier, two famous Russian writers,

Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov, also traveled cross-country in a Ford and published their travelogue. Ilya and Petrov noted:

America is located on a large Automobile Highway. When we shut

31 See Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, Contact Sheet, 36. 101

our eyes and try to resurrect in memory the country, we see before us not Washington, not New York, not San Francisco, not hills, not factories, not canyons but the crossing of two roads and a gasoline station against the background of telegraph wires and advertising billboards. Roads are one of the most remarkable phenomena in American life.32

To both native-born Americans or foreigners, the highway landscape became representative of America. Frank’s picture, as had Lange’s, captured an iconic highway scene with which many travelers could relate. Lange’s rendering of a empty highway in the West may have also inspired several other photographers, such as Arthur Rothstein’s

US 30 Sweetwater County, Wyoming, 1940 and Elliott Erwitt’s several shots in “35mm

Images from a Moving Car,” included in US Camera magazine in the September issue of

1954.

Not only responding to Lange’s iconic empty highway, Frank’s U.S. 285 [2-3] also seems to echo his previous picture of a street scene in New York City, 1951, using the white, sharp dividing line to direct the viewer’s vision. [2-4] This New York street scene with a similar composition and discernible white line in the center also was included in the 1954 September issue of the US Camera magazine for introducing Frank as “the

32 Day, Robert Frank’s The Americans, 82. Original quote, Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov, Little Golden America: Two Famous Soviet Humorists Survey These United States (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1937), 76–89. Also see “Chapter Ten: On the Automobile Highway,” accessed May, 15, 2016, http://www.admit2.net/lga10.htm. 102

photographer as poet.” The main feature of the issue was a discussion about the pros and cons of 35 mm cameras to mark Leica’s thirtieth anniversary. By 1950, the use of 35 mm cameras had become the professional norm.33 Therefore, while Evans mostly used a large 8-by-10 view camera and Lange a 4-by-5, Frank’s choice of a 35 mm Leica along with other photographers in the 1950s marked a departure from the documentary photography of the 1930s. This difference in apparatus further resulted in a change in photographic approach, style, and aesthetic as demonstrated in the road photographs of the 1930s and the 1950s. Since late 1948, Frank was encouraged by Alexis Brodovitch to switch to 35mm Leica from his primary camera, the larger 2 1/4-by-2 1/4 inch

Rolleiflex.34 Unlike Evans, Frank was able to photograph more swiftly, spontaneously, and freely, especially without setting up the cumbersome tripod. Frank could depict more ephemeral moments and subjects in a much less settled position or spacious surrounding, such as pedestrians crossing the street, the service lady in an elevator, passengers on the train, and people in crowded drugstores, factories, or political rallies. Thus, the sense of

33 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 12 and pl. 94. New York City, 1951 was shown on p. 83 of the 1954 September issue of US Camera. Eugene Smith had been fired for using a handheld camera instead of the large camera prescribed by his supervisors at Newsweek 15 years ago; however by 1950, he already was famous for Life picture stories shot with a “miniature” Leica.

34 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 13. 103

rapidity or unsettledness is not merely created by the movement of Frank’s subjects, but more often by the photographer’s gesture while framing his pictures, that is, Frank is constantly moving and finding his shot.35

The effect of Frank’s photographs is inseparable from his direct, rapid visual voice, which distinguished his style from Evans’s more impersonal one. Evan’s photographs usually are presented as if they were just the inevitable result of a process in which Evans had found a subject, set up a camera on the tripod, framed the picture, and exposed his film one sheet per shot. Thus, Evans’s pictures of such clarity are products of more prodigious labor and thoughtful concentration than Frank’s. Frank was usually on the move, unlike Evans, who could patiently wait days for the correct light to reveal his subject.36

Evans’s American Photographs and Frank’s The Americans not only reflect different ideas about America because the country underwent profound transformations as mirrored in these two books, but also about photography.37 While most writers have

35 Tod Papageorge, Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An Essay on Influence (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1981), 5.

36 Ibid, 6–7.

37 Ibid, Richard Field, “Acknowledgements,” un-paginated. 104

been content to oppose Evans’s “direct, sun-lit, dignified sense of place and moment” to

Frank’s “obscure, shadowed, oblique feeling of alienation,” the distinction raises many issues and begs a closer comparative analysis of the works of these two photographers.

Indeed, it was Evans’s photographic achievement that inspired and informed much of

Frank’s vision.38

By providing a view of Main Street and townscape from an elevated vantage point at a local hotel, Frank’s View from Hotel Window, Butte, Montana, 1956 is reminiscent of Evans’s Main Street, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1931. [1-4] Both pictures captured the townscape with buildings and parked cars, yet in Frank’s case, Butte was a dying mining town. As Frank looked east, East Broadway, at the left, functions as the diagonal line leading the viewer to the Berkeley Pit, a large truck-operated open-pit copper mine started in 1955 in the background of the picture.39 In contrast to the clear reflection of the wet surface of the street and sidewalk in Evans’s picture, Frank’s picture portrays a dark, grainy, and gloomy vista of the town that includes the mining industries and the distant open pit framed by the curtains of the hotel window.

38 Ibid.

39 Accessed December 22, 2015, http://www.visitmt.com/listings/general/landmark/berkeley-pit.html 105

Frank’s picture is poetic, as if the sad story of the town is unveiled through this window. He took this shot from the nine-story Hotel Finlen, built in 1924, the first big and all electric hotel in town. Frank represented the characteristics of the old mining neighborhood, large and small buildings, street, and industries, as well as parked cars, evoking multiple stories in one image. In the early 20th century, Butte had been a big city until the open pit replaced the traditional underground mining, which resulted in the replacement of human labor by machinery in the late 1950s. Since the town was heavily dependent on its mining industry, when the industry declined, the town also was affected.40

The implication of substance in Frank’s photographs also shifts from copper mine to gasoline. As stated in Chapter 1, the gas station is a necessary stop for the motorist. Similar to the motifs of automobiles and highways, gas stations are another symbolic theme of car and highway culture in photography. More cars fueled the demand for an expanded highway system. More roads required more gas stations. Photographs of such theme suggest the belief and phenomenon that gas station significantly operates in a reciprocal relationship with highway travels.

40 Philippe Séclier, An American Journey in Robert Frank’s Footsteps (New York: Lorber Films, 2009) DVD 106

Frank’s photograph of a gas station in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1955 is somewhat reminiscent in theme to many roadside gas stations in Evans’s photographs. [2-6;

1-7–1-10] Unlike the frontal, flattened or receding space in several of Evans’s gas station photographs, however, Frank purposely captured several gas pumps and a sign, but no cars.41 In Frank’s picture, the lonely gas pumps look like tombstones in this empty landscape. Garry Winogrand famously embraced the lesson offered by Frank’s style, and he commented on this image:

To me that was one of the most important pictures in the book. It’s…a photograph of nothing, there’s nothing happening there….When [Frank] took that photograph he couldn’t possibly know—he just couldn’t know that it would work, that it would be a photograph….I mean, understanding fully that he’s going to render what he sees, he still does not know what it’s going to look like as a photograph.42

Winogrand was thrilled by Frank’s artistic imagination of making such an exposure in the first place because of his adventurous shot selection and the timeless emptiness in the picture. Judging from the contact sheet, Frank actually made eight shots at this gas station.

Three shots showed a gas station serviceman in uniform filling up the tank of Frank’s car.

41 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, Contact Sheet, 42.

42 See Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 31, 41n82. For original quote, Charles Hagen, “Monkeys Make the Problem More Difficult: A Collective Interview with Garry Winogrand,” in Image 15, no. 2 (July 1972): 4. 107

Another three shots captured the gas pumps more frontally, which made the big SAVE sign and the shamrock sign on each pump less discernible. As he walked around taking photographs, Frank most likely was charmed by the big SAVE sign as he selected for his final publication.43

The huge neon sign, “SAVE GAS,” dwarfs every other feature of the station.

GAS is not illuminated and therefore barely visible during the day, which leaves the giant

SAVE written more dominantly across the sky.44 The message for the motorist implied

“saving money,” because gas was probably cheaper at this station. The sign also could be a reminder for motorists to save gas because gas stations might be scarce in this region.45

Frank seemed to photograph and select this view because like many other drivers on the road during the day, only SAVE is noticeable as if the gas station could also save the motorists from being exhausted, dehydrated, and out of gas. Therefore, the gas station seems to be a savior for motorists on the highway, as the fuel is the “Shamrock”

43 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, Contact Sheet, 42.

44 Day, Robert Frank’s The Americans, 103.

45 In 1956, Ed Ruscha left Oklahoma City to Los Angeles and later made Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962. The gas station was an inevitable feature on the road not only between Oklahoma City and Los Angeles, but also throughout the American West. Ruscha recalls that drivers still had to make calculated decisions about stopping and fueling up at one of the stations or gambling on where the next might come along, because gas stations were not as plentiful on the roads then as now. See Karin Breuer, Ed Ruscha and the Great American West (San Francisco, CA: Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2016), 12–13. 108

represented on the pumps, suggesting hope and good fortune.46

In 1955, when Frank was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship and was traveling across America, Vladimir Nabokov published his novel Lolita (1955) in Paris, appearing later in New York in 1958.47 As a foreigner and immigrant to the United States,

Nabokov vividly portrayed the road trip as quintessentially American. The protagonist and narrator in the novel, Humbert Humbert, a European literary scholar, traveled across the country with his twelve-year-old stepdaughter and lover, Dolores Haze, also known as

Lo or Lolita. They stopped at gas stations from time to time just like Frank and other motorists did. When using roadside facilities, Lo “would be charmed by toilet signs,” as

Humbert, “lost in an artist’s dream…would stare at the honest brightness of the gasoline paraphernalia.”48 As Gerald Silk argues, in Lolita, “the fascination with the superficially romantic qualities of the roadside is transformed into dread of its inescapable banality.”49

Frank, like Humbert in Lolita, was also amazed by the paraphernalia found in

46 Day, Robert Frank’s The Americans, 103.

47 Similar to the circumstances surrounding the publication of The Americans, Lolita was controversial and refused by four American presses before it was accepted by Olympia Press of Paris in 1955. The novel was even usually confiscated by U.S. Custom inspectors. Laufer, In Search of America: Photography from the Road, 1936–1976, 182–183.

48 Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (New York: Vintage, 1997), 153.

49 Gerald Silk, Automobile and Culture (New York: Abrams, 1984), 108. Lo is struck by all kinds of signs with repetitious names for motels, while Humbert tries to give Lo the impression of “going places” and put the American landscape in motion. 109

gas stations during the road trip. Both Nabokov and Frank traveled extensively across

America and depicted a convincing setting in their work from the personal experience, immense curiosity, and keen insight; Nabokov through the eyes of Humbert and Frank through his own lens.50 As Marilyn Laufer argues “The Americans is as highly a constructed and personal a statement about discovery and disclosure as any fictional account may be. Like Lolita, it reflects a keen observation of America as seen from the road by an astute and eloquent artist.”51 For Frank, his style and series suggested to the audience that this is what you too might have found if you had traveled with him on this road trip. Both Lolita and The Americans are perceptions by foreigners who might accentuate those things and ways of living of Americans that might have gone unnoticed or taken for granted.52

Perils and Pleasures

Similar to Evans’s American Photographs, Frank’s photographs in The

Americans can be read both individually and in a sequence. Since a majority of the prints in The Americans were taken during his cross-country road trip, the sequential reading of

50 Laufer, In Search of America: Photography from the Road, 1936–1976, 185.

51 Ibid, 187.

52 Ibid, 187–188. 110

them relates to film stills from a road movie. Frank placed Car Accident–U.S. 66, between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona, 1955 between Covered Car and U.S. 285. [2-7,

2-1, 2-3] The tarpaulin in the Covered Car links with the blanket covering the body in

Car Accident, in Frank’s purposeful sequencing. Here, Frank seems critical of the automobile in America; leisure, transportation, and convenience are tempered by accidents and death.

The contact sheets indicate that Frank was one of the drivers stuck in traffic because of this highway accident. It was a snowy day, and the road was wet and slippery.

Frank walked all the way to the scene from his car to document the aftermath of the accident. He took numerous shots of the incident, including the crashed car, a line of vehicles stuck in the traffic, a few passengers on the bus who had opened their windows to figure out what was going on, and some policemen and onlookers at the scene.53

Unlike images taken by Weegee or those for Police Reports, usually documenting details of the crash cars and victims, Frank’s Car Accident departs from this journalistic style.54

53 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, Contact Sheet, 35.

54 Mell Kilpatrick and Jennifer Dumas, Car Crash and Other Sad Stories (Berlin: Taschen, 2000) Kilpatrick was a news photographer for the Santa Ana Register, whose pictures were invaluable to insurance companies and the highway patrol. This book focused on a selection of his photographs of highway fatalities. 111

Car Accident appears immediately after Covered Car and both show long, low shapes and horizontal, frontal composition, and the pictorial schemes that reinforces each other’s hieratic solemnity.55

Frank photographed Crosses on Scene of Highway Accident–U.S. 91, Idaho [2-8] as the visual representation of the mourning and memorial of a highway fatality. He sandwiched the photograph between St. Francis, Gas Station, and City Hall–Los Angeles and Assembly Line–Detroit. [2-9, 2-10] The crosses clearly echo the cross held in the hand of the statue of St. Francis. Crosses on Scene of Highway Accident also suggests

Frank’s skepticism about mass production of automobiles depicted in the next image.

From the contact sheet, we know that Frank took several exposures of the three crosses on site, sometimes with passing cars or against the bright sky in the background. He did not choose his final print from other shots with a frontal view of the three crosses. Instead, he selected the shot in intimate distance from the crosses with dramatic light shining upon them as if this was a sacred place for mourning.56

In the previous image, the location is identified as the city hall in Los Angeles,

55 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 29.

56 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, Contact Sheet, 49. 112

showing the statue in the foreground against the gas station and auto garage across the street in the background. [2-9] Frank took numerous shots around the statue. From the contact sheet, we can tell the statue is located in front of the municipal court annex building. Frank took three other shots of the statue with a conventional frontal view.57

Several shots of the final composition were made, but all seemed to be a little overexposed. Frank still chose from these imperfect shots with a side view of the statue.

The final choice is formal and metaphorical. Frank avoided the conventional frontal view to avoid distracting poles and wires in the background. More importantly, the overexposure in the picture darkens the statue into a silhouette against the bright, vast sky that lends a celestial and sacred aura to the scene, preaching under the fog-drenched sun on a forlorn street of Los Angeles. The depth of the field and the haziness of the picture provide a sense of helplessness and despair.58 Frank used light to enhance the visual and metaphorical meanings of the scenes, from St. Francis, Gas Station, and City Hall–Los

Angeles to Crosses on Scene of Highway Accident–U.S. 91, Idaho.

57 Ibid., Contact Sheet, 48.

58 Greenough, Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 187. In 1955, Garry Winogrand photographed the same location. Yet, Winogrand took his shot from the opposite direction, and his picture appears much less intense than Frank’s. For the two photographs of the same location taken by Frank and Winogrand, see John Szarkowski, Winogrand: Figments from the Real World (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1988), 19. Also, a review on Winogrand, accessed July 18, 2016, http://www.ahmedchergui.com/bystander/?p=400 113

The cross of a statue in St. Francis, Gas Station, and City Hall–Los Angeles also responds to its previous image, Mississippi River, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1955, a photograph of an African American preacher, dressed all in white, carrying a tambourine, a Bible, and a cross in his hands and kneeling before the riverbank of Mississippi.59

When Frank spent almost three months in Los Angeles, his subjects became more diverse, and he made many more photographs with religious themes. He wanted to record how

Americans had incorporated religion into their daily lives and how they had transformed it as well.60

Frank probably intended to juxtapose the profound religious icon with the mundane and secular world, including the profane gas station, a symbol of consumption, material substance, energy, and the car culture, and the place of civic control, City Hall.61

Frank was attracted to the forlorn, isolated saint both because he seemed to be preaching to a bleak urban vista of gas stations and cars and because someone had placed a small vase of flowers at his feet. It was the combination of “big, grey block of cement in the

59 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 187.

60 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 129.

61 Although the title identifies the place as City Hall, the actual building behind the statue “Los Angeles Annex” is not seen in the picture, but in other frames taken at the same location. The big cement building in the background might also be one of the civic buildings, but is obscured under the fog-drenched sun. 114

background” and the personal tenderness of the flowers that moved him.62

St. Francis famously preached to birds; in the photograph, the statue seems to call to the cars in the parking lot, and the auto garage and gas station across the street, even if the cars appear somnolent, distant, and disinterested.63 Frank erroneously titled this photograph St. Francis, and the statue is in fact St. Junipero Serra, often depicted holding a cross high in the right hand and clutching a small church in his left arm.

Ironically, as a figure who had established the early church in California, the place he faced is now consumed by cars, and the tiny church in his arm seems anachronistic in this world of pistons, rubber, and asphalt, all suggested by the facilities across the street.64

Frank showed an interest in themes related to death. During his trip across

America, he photographed several scenes of funerals and cemeteries, including two images titled Funeral–St. Helena, South Carolina [2-25] and Chinese Cemetery–San

Francisco. He attended a funeral procession in Chinatown, San Francisco once and then

62 Ibid. Also see Frank’s original quote in Documentary Photography (New York: Time-Life Books, 1974), 170.

63 Day, Robert Frank’s The Americans, 144.

64 Day, Robert Frank’s The Americans, 96, 144. St. Junipero Serra was a Roman Catholic Spanish priest and friar of the Franciscan Order who founded missions in California from San Diego to San Francisco. 115

followed the convoy to the cemetery.65 He liked to document Americans and their gatherings, even when they passed away. The funeral and cemetery scenes offer a visual documentation of death rituals in American life. They might also suggest Frank’s existentialism in the choice of subject and context of his work, reflecting on mortality.66

Although Evans earlier had portrayed cemeteries, sometimes on the roadside, Frank also captured highway accidents and roadside crosses to suggest the dangers of the open road.

Frank encountered not only the perils but also the pleasures of the road during his trip. In the book, the highway accidents and roadside crosses provocatively and contradictorily linked to the four jukebox photographs. This is what Frank did intend to contrast: the dreariness of mortality and the liveliness of music.

As he traveled to California and examined his negatives in Los Angeles and later in Orinda, Frank edited them on the spot, cutting off and throwing away bad frames and those of no interest. During the process, he also noted some subjects that he repeatedly explored, such as cars, jukeboxes, and lunch counters among others.67 Later, several

65 Robert Frank Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

66 Frank had been influenced by Existentialist writers such as Andre Malraux, Jean Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus, early on in his career. William S. Johnson, “Public Statements/Private Views,” in Observations: Essays on Documentary Photography, ed. David Featherstone (Carmel, CA: The Friends of Photography, 1984), 88.

67 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 128. Frank arrived in Los Angeles on or 116

scenes with a jukebox in The Americans are categorized as an individual theme among his hundreds of contact sheets.68

How do cars, jukeboxes, and lunch counters speak and relate to each other? It is clear that Frank was fascinated by the auto-culture and the road trip and the roles that they play in American life. Jukeboxes were particularly popular during the 1950s.69 The jukebox was something new to Frank and in his travels he saw it over and over again.

Frank was also interested in conveying a sense of sound in his photographs.70 As Frank traveled across America, he also made countless stops for meals and drinks, which consequently led to the frames taken in cafés, diners, drugstores, bars, and restaurants.

Whether in the city or on the road the jukebox was a common fixture in many of those places. Although a jukebox may not be central to automobile culture at first glance, it is a unifier that one would encounter across the nation when traveling. Frank chronicled

just before the Christmas Day in 1955. After staying in Los Angeles for about three months, Frank and his family traveled to Orinda, near San Francisco, where he lived with photographer Wayne Miller and used his darkroom to develop film. See the “Chronology,” Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 367.

68 See Robert Frank Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

69 The portable transistor radio was not invented until 1954. In the 1950s, people still tended to listen to their favorite or newest songs on jukeboxes in cafés, bars, diners, and dancing halls if they did not update the newest records at home.

70 Morris et al., Photography within the Humanities, 55. This was one of Frank’s responses in a series of symposia called “Photography within the Humanities” which inquired into the functions of photography. The series was in memory of Walker Evans, and Frank was one of the ten speakers. 117

typically American motoring scenes. These themes suggest the mood of the place and the state of mind of being on the road by representing what a traveler looks at and listens.

By the middle of the 1940s, 75% of the records produced in America went into jukeboxes.71 One of the greatest hits was Bobby Troup’s famous Get your Kicks on

Route 66, first recorded and released by Nat King Cole in 1946. The song was inspired by

Troup’s own road trip with his wife Cynthia after Troup received the discharge order from the Marines and drove from his hometown Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Los Angeles to pursue his career as a Hollywood songwriter in Los Angeles.72 His song was presumably a result of the revival of automobile travel on US 66 that once had been reduced because of the rationing of rubber tires and gasoline imposed during the WWII.

Troup was among the 3.5 million people who drove to California during this era of a westward migration triggered by the end of the war, far greater than anything during the

Great Depression.73 The song vividly describes and celebrates the journey on US 66, and

71 Tyler Cowen, In Praise of Commercial Culture, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 164.

72 The couple took US 40 to St. Louis, Missouri where they picked up US 66 out to Los Angeles. Arthur J. Krim, Route 66: Iconography of the American Highway (Santa Fe, NM: Center for American Places, 2005), 117

73 Ibid, 115. Rationing was meant to control the use of gasoline other scarce materials, and urged citizens to draw a distinction between essential and non-essential travel. John Alfred Heitmann, The Automobile and American Life (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2009), 126. Bud Gunderson recalled that during the first years of the war, he had seen times when his automobile was the only one on US 66. However, as a war veteran, there was a traffic jam on the highway after the war. For many veterans did not go home but went 118

was recorded several times by various artists since 1955.74 The song is not merely a record of personal driving experience, but a collective one, and it also becomes a lyrical travelogue that exemplifies the road music and American highway culture.

In 1947, the year Frank first came to the United States, jukeboxes already had appeared in an advertising campaign for Wurlitzer in Life magazine with the slogan,

“Musical Fun for Everyone.”75 In the January 26, 1948 issue of Life, the main theme for the advertisement was: “On Main Street—Highways and Byways,” and it says:

Go where you will. Look and listen as you go. Everywhere people are having fun to Wurlitzer Music. That’s the kind of music it is. Catchy tunes that start you singing. Lively tunes that stimulate fellowship and fun. Popular tunes, the music of the people, by the top entertainers, for your enjoyment. Next time you go out for good or refreshment, go in where they have Wurlitzer Music. You’ll find that

traveling, taking vacations, visiting relatives and war buddies, and find new places to live and work. More than 8 million people moved into the trans-Mississippi West, 3.5 million of them into California alone. Many of them took US 66, just like Bobby Troup did. Gunderson also noted that one of the things every American solider had fought for in the war was to protect his rights as an American. “One of those rights was to be able to get in his car, turn the key, and go anywhere he wanted to. There are no boundaries here; the highways are not closed in the dark, or at ate borders. As long as he had the money for a car, he could go anywhere he wanted.” Quinta Scott and Susan Croce Kelly, Route 66: The Highway and its People (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 148.

74 Accessed August 1, 2016, https://secondhandsongs.com/work/10838/versions

75 Tina Olsin Lent, Situating The Americans: Robert Frank and the Transformation of American Photography (Ph.D. diss.: University of Rochester, 1994), 202. For more complete list of the advertisements that appeared in Life (Chicago: Time Inc.), March 3, 1947, 48; March 31, 1947, 122; April 21, 1947, 143; May 19, 1947, 90; June 16, 1947, 56; July 14, 1947, 120; October 6, 147, 104-105; October 27, 1947, 153; November 24, 1947, 21; January 5, 1948, 60; January 26, 1948, 110. As portrayed in the March 3, 1947 issue, the jukebox had “The Magic That Changes Moods!” The caption further explains: “Like magic, you will find Wurlitzer Music will change your mood, brighten and lighten your outlook. You will go home refreshed and relaxed for having had a wonderful time.” See Life, March 3, 1947, 48. 119

good tunes and good times always go together.76

Although not every jukebox that Frank photographed was made by Wurlitzer, its campaign surely was instrumental in promoting how jukeboxes were visualized, advertised, and received in popular culture. Like the ad suggests, the jukebox could be found in the city or in stops along roadways across the nation. The jukebox also offers the good times with good music for the public, especially for the popular tourist season during the summer, which seems reasonable investments for the café and bar owners as well.77 In these portrayals in the popular imagery and magazines, people are joyful and gather around the jukebox, as if the jukebox is the center of the world of happiness. This kind of depiction, all white and all ages, becomes common for Americans at the time.78

Frank’s depictions of the jukebox are similar to but also different from those in popular magazines, retaining some stereotypes but also breaking from them in tone and content.

76 Life, January 26, 1948, 110.

77 Life, July 14, 1947, 120. The caption of the ad reads “Having a wonderful time.” A smaller picture at top left portrays a young white family, also illustrated in the main picture below at the right, sending a letter home. The caption of this advertisement states: “Nothing will spur vacationists to send the home folks glowing reports of the wonderful time they are having like the fun at resorts where there is Wurlitzer Music. For there’s nothing like the latest hits by top bands to foster good fellowship, good times and a grand vacation.”

78 Frank arrived in New York on March 14, 1947. As an assistant at one of the major magazines, Harper’s Bazaar, from April to October 1947, and then continued as a freelance photographer, it is safe to assume that Frank was familiar with visual representations of the jukebox and other themes in popular culture at the time. 120

Frank was not the only person who recognized the significance of a jukebox as part of the American scene whether in the city or on the road. Jack Kerouac wrote in On the Road, “I walked into the least likely place in the world, a kind of lonely plains soda fountain for the local teenage girls and boys. They were dancing a few of them, to the music of the jukebox.”79 In Candy Store, New York City, [2-11] Frank photographed a

Wurlitzer jukebox in the center of the picture surrounded by two young women and a group of male teenagers in what appears to be a tiny, crowded space in a store. The jukebox was an adjunct to adolescence, part of the rites of passage of the youth in

America in the 1950s. The machine performs for the teenagers, creating a concert. The young man wearing a leather jacket at the bottom right seems to be playing a solo on an imaginary trumpet, as the music absorbed him.80 This scene seems to exemplify what the

Wurlitzer ad suggests: “There’s a Witchery to Wurlitzer Music,” as it further asserts that a jukebox can bring: “More Fun. More Life. More Laughter.”81

In contrast to the cramped space and crowdedness in New York City, Frank chronicled another jukebox scene when he traveled in the South, Café, Beaufort, South

79 Jack Kerouac, On the Road (London: Penguin, 1972), 32.

80 Day, Robert Frank’s The Americans, 102.

81 Life, October, 27, 1947, 153. 121

Carolina. [2-12] He presented a nearly empty vista with only a jukebox at the left of the picture and an African-American baby crawling on the floor at the right. The jukebox,

Rock-Ola Model 1426, is gigantic in relation to the baby.82 Segregation still was prominent in many Southern states in the mid-1950s. From Frank’s contact sheet, it seems that the lady standing behind the counter might be the baby’s mother or grandmother.83 It is safe to assume that most customers of this café would have been

African-Americans, except for Frank. Unlike the Wurlitzer ad in Life, all white and joyous, Frank recorded a different but still truthful jukebox scene in a café that mostly served African Americans.

Frank presented another jukebox scene in Bar, Las Vegas, Nevada, [2-13] showing a lonely figure and suggesting the isolation. The subject is a Hispanic man standing in front of the jukebox. His casual flowered shirt signals his leisure. The jukebox seems to be his companion, his associate, and he stands in obvious communion with the box.84 The picture is backlit because of the circular windows on the door and walls in the background. The light coming out from the jukebox also is reflected on the face of the

82 Day, Robert Frank’s The Americans, 102.

83 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, Contact Sheet, 22.

84 Ibid., 101. 122

Hispanic man as he looks at the discography and is about to select a song.

The scene may seem reminiscent of the imagery in Life as one ad states “the musical pulse of America is at your fingertips,” while another depicts a scene at the seashore, with crowds outside a restaurant on the beach, a man placing his finger on the juke at the center of the picture, and the caption reads: “Having a wonderful time.”85

Although Frank grasped the moment that the Hispanic figure is about to do what the two ads describe, the picture delivers a different mood. It is empty, lonely, and perhaps quiet in the picture, as if Frank held his breath to wait for the Hispanic man to make the selection. Frank’s photograph is poetic and evokes the feeling as if the audience is at the scene with the subject as well. Perhaps similar to what another Wurlitzer ad in Life suggests, Frank invited his audience to “Stop—Linger and Listen!”86

For Frank, the jukebox is not only the machine that conveys the sound and music but also the one that radiates and glows in the oftentimes dark indoor setting. This also is true of another of his jukebox photographs, Bar, New York City. [2-14] The

85 Life, October, 27, 1947, 153. Also Life, July 14, 1947, 120.

86 Life, May 19, 1947, 90. In the ad, there is a young man, with his camera strap across the chest, dancing with a young lady in front of the jukebox, while others are dining at the tables. In the foreground of the picture, the father holds and reads a map while the waitress is serving their meal. There are boats depicted in the background, and cars are parked outside the restaurant, suggesting this is a popular tourist location. In Frank’s case, he and his family drove into Las Vegas from the Hoover Dam and on their way to Los Angeles. Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 367. 123

photographic choice is both acoustic and visual. Frank was sitting at the bar with a guy next to him, yet Frank kept his focus on the jukebox in all the shots he took.87

Frank had a consistent interest and systematic effort to record jukeboxes since he was awarded the Guggenheim fellowship.88 A jukebox was ubiquitous, a collateral object one would encounter across the nation while traveling, whether in the metropolis, a small town, or a place on the road. All his jukebox photographs may not tell us whether the jukebox was actually playing or which song it played. They disclose the limitation of photographs, but further evoke a different sense other than simply visual. They enhance the sense of atmosphere of the locale, whether a candy store, a café, or a bar. These are places where people gather. A jukebox is not only a vending machine related to the consumption of music, but also provides people with the possibility of sharing music and feelings. Throughout the jukebox photographs, Frank sought to document the nation and its people diversely in terms of region, race, gender, and age. He also captured a sense of alienation as he travelled on the road, most of the time alone.

In addition to the jukebox that conveys a sound in his photographs, Frank also

87 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, Contact Sheet, 43.

88 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 367. Frank was awarded the fellowship on April 15, 1955 for the period of May 1955 –May 1956. He began to photograph in and around New York, and Candy Store, New York City, was one of his earliest jukebox photographs. 124

presented a television set in a roadside café as a sign of media and mass culture in

Restaurant, U.S. 1 Leaving Columbia, South Carolina. [2-15] In Frank’s later retrospective, the figure on the screen has been identified as Oral Roberts, one of

America’s most famous television evangelists. He looks serious, even sour-faced or aggressive in a way. His expression of dour sincerity is typical of media evangelism.

Frank was most likely an alien to this technological advancement in religion in the age of mass communication in the United States, and contemplating on the tangibility of the preaching and the way television helped the religion to connect the congregation from all over the places.89 Here, however, Roberts preached in an empty diner. The photograph therefore projects a sense of the isolation of the traveler.90 Like the bar in Las Vegas with the light coming from the windows in the background and from the jukebox, Frank captured the radiant television along with the bright light entering from the window and reflected on the dining table.

During the decades of the Great Depression and the War, many American

89 Robert Frank had a theme related to mass media in mind, not only did he photograph movie premiere in Movie Premiere—Hollywood, but also include an image of how TV production worked behind the scene in Television Studio—Burbank, California in The Americans.

90 Day, Robert Frank’s The Americans, 96, 118. The identification of the figure on the TV screen as Oral Roberts was noted in Robert Frank, The Lines of My Hand (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), unpaginated. 125

households had radios for listening to the news and music. In 1947, there were 40 million radios in the United States, and only 44,000 television sets. The number of homes with

TVs also increased dramatically from 0.4 % in 1948 to 55.7% in 1954 and to 83.2% in

1958.91 In the mid-1950s, television had become popular for people to watch at home and in diners and bars and roadside establishments. In contrast to popular and documentary photographs of radios in households in the Depression, Frank’s photograph of a television set in a roadside restaurant marks the 1950s with a symbolic popular product of technological advancement. It even shows how Frank might have been intrigued by this growing media culture, including the evangelism on TV. Different from the religious scene and images in Europe, as a Jewish descendent, Frank tried to perceive how Christianity defined America. The radiance seems to be reminiscent of an illuminating church with light from the stained-glasses and from the high altar, and here

Frank consciously framed the light coming from windows and emanating from the television set as if Oral Roberts bears a halo. Frank also ironically sanctified this solitary meditation on one’s preaching with earthly settings, condiments on a dining table and chairs along with the breezy stand-in for the Holy Spirit, an electric fan on the counter at

91 James L. Baughman, “Television Comes to America, 1947-1957,” accessed December 22, 2015, http://www.lib.niu.edu/1993/ihy930341.html 126

left.

In Restaurant, U.S. 1 Leaving Columbia, South Carolina, Roberts’ head points in the direction of the next photo, a drive-in theater, another subject related to sounds and to symbols of postwar American culture. Frank’s placement of a photograph of the drive-in theater next to one of a televangelist probably reminds his audience that there were drive-in churches at the time, and people could even worship God in cars.92 Some drive-in theaters hold church services during the day and screen movies in the evening.

They create a communal experience for Americans to spend time at the same place for different purposes. The connection between religion and entertainment also develops unique American automobile and highway culture. The sequence of watching the television in a roadside diner and watching a movie in a drive-in theater seems to be carefully arranged and further turns the space from indoors to outdoors. In Drive-in

Movie, Detroit, [2-16] Frank recorded the scene of Americans watching movies outdoors,

92 Yale Joel, a photographer who worked for Life took a series of photographs of the Sunday service sermon by Rev. Harold W. Melvin in August, 1951 at the Neponset Drive-in, Dorchester, Massachusetts. Accessed July 9, 2016, http://images.google.com/hosted/life/6aa382c078a1ec6a.html. In 1955, Life magazine also covered the Drive-in Church in Venice, Florida, subtitling “Floridians worship in cars.” See “Drive-in Church,” in Life, April 18, 1955, 175–178. Accessed, July 9, 2016, https://books.google.com/books?id=4lUEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA175&dq=%22drive%20in%20church%22 &pg=PA175#v=onepage&q=%22drive%20in%20church%22&f=false 127

sitting in their own cars.93 A black box, the speaker, appears at the far left of the picture.

Cars parked on the terraced ramps so that a car would not block the view of other cars behind.

Through the reversed letters above the screen, the drive-in theater is identified as the Gratiot Drive-in Theater located on the state highway, Gratiot Avenue near the East

21 Mile Road, northeast of downtown Detroit, Michigan.94 The theater opened on April

30, 1948 and featured free pony rides, a merry-go-round and other playground amusements for children. There was even a large restaurant that could warm baby bottles on schedule for patrons. The back of the 115-foot tall screen tower featured a living curtain waterfall, illuminated at night by colored lights to simulate Niagara Falls. The theater could park 1,056 cars.95 The Gratiot was believed to be the most spectacular drive-in in the Detroit area; it was one of only two drive-ins in the world to have an actual

93 Life magazine had numerous photographs of the drive-in theater since the late 1940s. See “Life at the Drive-in: Photos of a Vanishing American Pastime,” accessed July 14, 2016, http://time.com/3877323/drive-in-theaters-photos-of-a-vanishing-american-pastime/

94 Robert Frank was prolific and photographed at least forty-six rolls of film in and near Detroit when he visited there during late June to mid-July of 1955. He worked systematically in the professional mode as he shot twenty-four of them at the Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge Plant near Dearborn. Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 21. Of all eighty-three prints in The Americans, two are taken in Dearborn, seven around Detroit, and one in Ann Arbor. Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 367.

95 Accessed December, 22, 2015, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/12313 128

waterfall cascading down its screen face at the time.96 Patrons would arrive early to stand in front of the screen tower, where the water cascaded down in front of them. The cool mist was especially popular in the summer. For the visitors, the wonder evoked a readily accessible version of Niagara Falls.97 It is safe to speculate that when Frank traveled to

Detroit, he had in mind the Gratiot Drive-in as a local spectacle to visit. By the time he photographed this theater, the screen on the tower already had been widened due to the change of the ratio of the film and projector. From the contact sheet, it is clear that the movie showing at the Gratiot that night was The Looters, 1955. Although Frank took a photograph when the movie began from inside his car, he soon walked among the parked cars and toward the screen tower to find a better view for his photograph.98

By the end of the 1950s, one-third of Americans lived in the suburbs, and many of them were young families, as well as military back from WWII.99 Cars were

96 Harry Skrdla, Michigan’s Drive-in Theaters (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014), 33.

97 Don Sanders and Susan Sanders, The American Drive-In Movie Theater (St. Paul, MN: Motorbooks International, 2003), 52–54. Frank most likely visited Detroit between late June and mid-July in 1955. See Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 367.

98 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, Contact Sheet, 46.

99 Frank explored the birth of suburbs during the road trip as he photographed Westlake, Dale City, California, 1956, with the wide, winding, open road in the center and lines of houses on both sides. This picture was included in the preliminary sequence. Frank also photographed a view of the desert at the edge of Las Vegas with mountains in the background and a street sign in the foreground in Las Vegas, Nevada, 1955. Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 27, 91. For the preliminary sequence, Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 468. 129

necessities to commute to and from the city, work, and shopping. There was also a demand for theaters in rural areas. In addition, cars always had been a private or family space for Americans. Young drivers enjoyed their romantic moment or just hanging out in their cars away from prying parents. Families also treasured time together. At drive-in theaters, people had the privilege to talk, smoke, and dress as they wished, even bring their babies or pets along. Like the Gratiot theater, many drive-ins had a playground for children. Some children even wore pajamas or brought sleeping bags because by the time the drive-in showed the second film, many fell asleep. Cars became surrogate of domestic space for Americans. More importantly, there were few parking troubles in going to a drive-in theater.100

The photograph of a drive-in theater not only documents the pleasure commonly provided by roadside services in America, but also suggests the byproduct of two major

American industries, the automobile and Hollywood. Frank encapsulated the heyday of the drive-in theater in the 1950s. Before WWII, there were only about 100 drive-ins in

America. The conventional heyday for the drive-ins was 1948–1954, when the

100 April Wright, Going Attraction: Definitive Story of American Drive-in Movie (Hermosa Beach, CA: Drive-In Doc LLC., 2013), DVD. 130

nationwide number increased from 820 to 3,775.101 Another relevant statistic indicates that from 1946 to 1953, 851 new indoor theaters were built, while 4,696 were closed permanently. On the other hand, 2,976 drive-ins were opened, with just 342 closing down in the same period. The newly built indoor theaters usually were much smaller than the ones from the prewar period, whereas the new drive-ins were bigger and bigger and some could even hold 1,300 cars.102 By 1958 when more than 67 million cars were registered in America, there were almost 5,000 drive-ins.103

Encountering a jukebox and drive-in theater was a particularly American experience for Frank. Another foreigner, the novelist Vladimir Nabokov, recognized these important themes in contemporary America as well. In his novel Lolita, Humbert describes “luminous globules of gonadal glow that travel up the opalescent sides of juke boxes.”104 Humbert also notices the drive-in theater as he notes:

While searching for night lodgings, I passed a drive-in. In a selenian glow, truly

101 Accessed September 17, 2915, http://drive-ins.com/museum/brief-overview-drive-in-movies.htm

102 Kerry Segrave, Drive-in Theaters: A History from Their Inception in 1933 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 65.

103 Wright, Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of American Drive-in Movie, 2013, DVD. “Motor Vehicle Registrations,” accessed September, 17, 2015, http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/1027_motor_vehicle_registrations.html

104 Nabokov, Lolita, 134. 131

mystical in its contrast with the moonless and massive night, no a gigantic screen slanting away among dark drowsy fields, a thin phantom raised a gun, both he and his arm reduced to tremulous dishwater by the oblique angle of that receding world,—and the next moment a row of trees shut off the gesticulation.105

In the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of Lolita (1962), Humbert also takes Mrs. Charlotte Haze and the teenage Dolores to the drive-in movie theater; both of the women try to hold Humbert’s hand during the screening.106 Like the music played out of the jukebox, the movies have the similar witchery. More importantly, motorists also are easily attracted by illuminated sites and sights on the road after dark while driving, whether neon signs of roadside gas stations and restaurants or the gigantic glowing screen at the drive-in theater.

Frank captured a variety of entertainments during his road trip that helped to define America and its roadside in the post-WWII era. For a frequent traveler on the road as Frank, jukeboxes, television sets, and drive-in theaters inevitably become part of the visual memories and sensory experiences. Like road signs, gas stations, and motels, these subjects also become markers of the roadside landscape in American popular and material culture.

105 Ibid., 293.

106 Stanley Kubrick, Lolita (Beverly Hills, CA: MGM, 2007, 1962), DVD. 132

Contextualizing The Americans

Robert Frank’s series of photographs was first published by Robert Delpire in

Paris in late November 1958, entitled Les Américains, perhaps echoing Henri

Cartier-Bresson’s Les Européens published in 1955.107 Delpire intended to include this series as the fifth work in Encyclopédie essentielle, a series of educational books he recently had published to introduce French audiences to science, and to the history and culture of France and other countries. Although the French version was available at the bookstore of the Museum of Modern Art in New York at the time, it barely received notice from the American critics.108 Few scholars paid much attention to the French edition, or to a comparative study of the difference in the French edition and the English one, perhaps due to the limited circulation. By reviewing some of the texts selected in the

French edition by the editor, Alain Bosquet, our understanding of Frank’s The Americans can be enriched.

The major difference between the French and the English versions is that the

French version contains text on the left of each spread with Frank’s photograph on the

107 Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Europeans (New York: Simon Schuster, 1955). Greenough, Looking in: Robert Frank’s The Americans, 135–138.

108 Greenough, Looking in: Robert Frank’s The Americans, 135–138. 133

right. In the English version the only text is the introduction written by Jack Kerouac; all the photographs are on the right juxtaposed with a blank page on the left. At first, Frank had trouble finding someone to publish the series in America since the photographs are not entirely pro-American; which may explain why the French edition was published first.

It is noteworthy that the French edition begins with few quotes by de

Tocqueville from his Democracy in America (1835):

There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world which seem to tend toward the same end, although they started from different points: I allude to the Russians and the Americans. The principal instrument of the Anglo-American is freedom, the Russian servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.109

The freedom that de Tocqueville praised was still valid and especially crucial in America during the Cold War. The freedom of traveling was not only a product of the ideology of individual freedom in a democratic society in America, but also of the affluence and prosperity of the nation. The French edition also contains texts selected from Simone de

109 Robert Frank and Alain Bosquet, Les Américains (Paris: R. Delpire, 1958), 6. Original quote and translation is based on Democracy in America (South Australia: The University of Adelaide Library, 2014), accessed December 23, 2015, https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/tocqueville/alexis/democracy/complete.html 134

Beauvoir’s America Day by Day (1954) and André Maurois’s Histoire des Etats-Unis

(1943) / The Miracles of America (1944), as well as quotes from several American presidents and writers, such as Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S.

Truman, Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Benjamin Franklin, and John Steinbeck.110

Designed to give it greater legitimacy, the French edition offered a variety of views of

America, especially from French intellectuals, for its Francophone readers. Frank’s photographs of American life, therefore, belong to a tradition of more than 400 years of

Europeans trying to capture “the uniqueness, the essence, or the meaning of the people who inhabited the New World.”111

Frank commented on what he saw and encountered during his trip through his photographs, and some of them explored complicated social issues, such as racial inequality. Frank portrayed a common and stereotypical image of an African American nanny in a pristine white uniform holding a Caucasian infant on the street in Charleston,

South Carolina. [2-17] He recalled, “It was the first time I was in the South, and the first time I really saw segregation. I found it extraordinary that whites would give their

110 For a fuller list of authors whose texts were quoted, see Stuart Alexander, Robert Frank: A Bibliography, Filmography, and Exhibition Chronology, 1946–1985, 17.

111 Peter C. Marzio, “Introduction” in Tucker, Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia, 6. 135

children to black women when they wouldn’t allow the women to sit by them in the drugstore.”112 The stark contrast between the black and white in the picture touches upon the difference of color and class in American society, especially in the South. The picture shows a common scene of how many southerners were raised and were raising their own children.

This picture of a black nanny cradling a white baby is in stark contrast to Frank’s portrayals of how a black infant is raised, left on the cushion on the floor in

Café—Beaufort, South Carolina, 1955.113 [2-12] The picture of a black nanny cradling a white baby, may lead one to question the whereabouts of the nanny’s own child or if she had one. While the black baby is absent in this case, the black baby in the latter photograph is pictured alone and unattended in an empty room with only a gigantic jukebox, while the mother or grandmother is working at the counter outside of Frank’s frame. Both taken in South Carolina—one outdoor on the street and the other in a café—these two pictures share the same social context of African American life but

112 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 26. Also see original quote, Documentary Photography (New York: Time-Life Books, 1974), 161.

113 A recent novel and movie The Help, based on stories of African American maids working for white families in Mississippi, offers a good understanding of this social issue in the South during that time. Although the novel is set in the early 1960s and in Jackson, Mississippi, the scenario was widespread for the black maids and nannies in the South. Kathryn Stockett, The Help (New York: Amy Einhorn Books, 2009) or the movie directed by Tate Taylor, The Help (Burbank, CA: Touchstone Home Entertainment, 2011). 136

deliver different connotations through the absence of the mother or the child.

A black nanny holding a white baby as a common scene in the South and a theme in photography can also be found in the work of one of Frank’s contemporaries,

Gordon Parks. In Airline Terminal, Atlanta, Georgia, 1956, [2-18] Parks photographed a stone-faced African-American woman in a spotless maid’s uniform holding a white baby tightly as the mother sits beside them in the passenger waiting room at the airport in

Atlanta. According to the notes Parks sent with the film to the Life magazine lab, the shot was taken around 2 a.m. “A white baby is held by a Negro maid while the baby’s mother checks on reservations, etc. Although the Negro woman serves as nurse-maid for the white woman’s baby, the two would not be allowed to sit and eat a meal together in any

Atlanta restaurant.”114 The nanny is being dutiful and loyal. The very stylishly dressed white woman is wearing all black except for her turquoise necklace. The nanny is not wearing a wedding ring or any jewelry at all, perhaps because she was working or could not afford it.115

Like the scene Frank photographed, we might wonder whether the

114 Accessed December, 26, 2015, http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/gordon-parks-a-jim-crow-mystery/#

115 Ibid. 137

African-American woman had her own children. Frank and Parks both photographed a similar scene of a white baby held by an African American maid in public in the South.

They captured the intimacy between the nanny and the baby as well. Nonetheless, the difference between Frank’s and Parks’s photograph is not only the color of the photograph, but also the color of the photographer. While Frank was able to photograph his subject very closely, Parks had to sneak his photograph from behind another

African-American because Parks did not want to offend his white subject due to his own race. For Parks, his camera was a weapon against poverty and racism, whereas Frank was encountering scenes that may have been a bit of a cultural shock.116

When he traveled from Norfolk to Richmond, Virginia, to Charlotte, North

Carolina, Frank was “amazed” by the racial discrimination he saw. Nothing prepared him for the rigid segregation of the South, which he described as “totally a new experience.”117 Frank wanted not only to comment on the pervasive presence of racism but also to reveal the affinity he felt for African Americans. He also went to other places in the South as Evans suggested. But unlike his predecessor, mentor, and close friend

116 Accessed December, 31, 2015, http://www.gordonparkscenter.org/biography/timeline.aspx

117 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 122. “Walker Evans with Robert Frank and Others, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut,” May 5, 1971, unpublished manuscript, p.7, Robert Frank Archive, National Gallery of Art, Washington. 138

Evans who often saw objects, the vernacular, and the past, Frank saw people, the present, and the very pressing issue of racism.118

Another photograph showing racial segregation is Trolley, New Orleans, 1955, taken on December 1, 1955, just a few weeks before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in nearby Montgomery, Alabama.119 [2-19] Frank framed his subjects squarely in grids with a frontal view. Looking through the windows, the subjects are all white in the first three windows on the left, while two black figures are shown on the right in the back of the trolley. The reflection above the windows is not only reminiscent of 35 mm film in a sense, but also provides distorted street views. The facial expressions of the figures are noteworthy: the white lady in the second window from the left presents a snobbish pose; the boy next to her has a curious but questioning stare, while a baby girl sharing the same seat is crying out loud; and the African-American worker maintains a direct, solemn, dignified but slightly despairing, gaze.120

Ironically, Frank selected Fourth of July, Jay, New York, 1956, a joyful party

118 Ibid.

119 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 27–28.

120 The “white only” screens on New Orleans’ streetcars were not officially removed until 1958. Accessed, December, 31, 2015, http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=735. See also Editors of Time-Life Books, Documentary Photography, 167, 171. 139

celebrating Independence Day and a mainly-white-domestic scene, with men chatting and carefree girls playing in the yard, prior to the Trolley, New Orleans. [2-20, 2-19] As a naturalized American, eager to gain citizenship, Frank certainly knew that the Fourth of

July also was associated with the belief proclaiming “all men are created equal.”121 The flag is meant to be a lead-in to the second of four parts in the series according to Frank’s original intention. Following the Trolley, New Orleans is another street scene Frank took in that city. In Canal Street, New Orleans, [2-21] Frank captured people passing by in a more bustling atmosphere in contrast to the more confined space in the Trolley. Although the space in both pictures is flattened and cramped in a way, Frank demonstrated the tension, the gaze, the order, and the distinction between black and white people in the

Trolley, whereas he presented a loose, nonchalant, chaotic, and mostly white, scenario in

Canal Street.

Frank also paid attention to automobile landscapes, depicting how American people used and interacted with their cars in daily life and leisure time. He captured the solemnity and seriousness of the atmosphere and facial expression of an

121 The sequence of this image followed by hierarchically segregated trolley photograph demonstrates Frank’s criticism and skepticism of the current social reality. Greenough, Looking in: Robert Frank’s The Americans, 185. 140

African-American attending a funeral as several other male figures stand next to their cars in Funeral, St. Helena, South Carolina. [2-22] Besides the automobile landscape in the South, Frank also captured a more joyful moment of several African American children in an open, moving car in Belle Isle, Detroit. [2-23] Frank decisively grasped the moment and the sense of motion and speed by tracking the car swiftly with his camera in contrast to the blurry parked cars and trees in the background. Interestingly, Frank purposely arranged an elderly white couple driving a car in the next image, Detroit. [2-24]

The African-American family was driving toward the right, whereas the elderly white couple was driving to the left. Their visions from different directions meet in the reading of the sequence.

The two shots are similar in composition and angle, recording the profiles of the drivers and passengers, as well as their facial expression. While the African-American family is in a cabriolet, the white couple is in a roofed automobile. From the contact sheet and earlier versions of the un-cropped prints, the elderly couple in the foreground and the car and the tree in the background are all clear. Frank probably took the shot while the couple had just parked or were stuck in the traffic, and the sense of motionless coincidentally alluded to the age of the couple. Judging from the contact sheet of Belle 141

Isle, Detroit and Detroit, Frank presumably took both shots at the same occasion in the park while crowds of different gender, age, and race all gathered together, and many of them came with their own cars.122

One of Frank’s intentions in The Americans was to depict automobile culture and how it ties to American life, and this includes scenes of Americans spending their leisure time. He photographed young couples making out in the park in front of their parked cars in Public Park, Ann Arbor. [2-25] These two young couples are wearing bathing suits and probably had spent some time playing or swimming in the lake or water park. Other people are shown picnicking based on other Frank’s frames in the contact sheet.123 Frank recorded Americans with their automobiles almost everywhere and at any occasion, whether African-American or white, teenager or senior citizen, in the mid-West or South, at a funeral or in the park, automobiles were pervasive and irreplaceable significant possessions of necessity and social life in postwar America.

In a sense Americans seem to become equal through cars, with cars, and in cars.

Frank’s views renewed the ideology of consumerism as projected on the billboard of The

122 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, Contact Sheet, 77/78.

123 Ibid., Contact Sheet, 80. 142

American Way in a purely white and middle class version as witnessed by Lange, other photographers, and many Americans in the thirties. [1-32] Nevertheless, it was problematic for Frank to document the Native American hitchhikers driving his car in U.S

91, Leaving Blackfoot, Idaho, which implied the socio-economical inequality because many of them did not own or afford an automobile. [2-2]

In the application for renewal of his Guggenheim Fellowship, Frank wrote that his aim was “…to portray Americans as they live at present. Their every day and their

Sunday, their realism and dream. The look of their cities, towns and highways.”124

Through Frank’s lens, the automobile can symbolize social status and the stereotypical

American life. In the book, there appear to be fewer wealthy and elite people and more of the “general public,” including minorities and those on the margins of society. During the trip, he took images of Native Americans and Hispanic laborers and extensively explored

African-American life. Frank was not only depicting the segregation and stratification, but also racial and ethnic diversity.125

In the section “Les Noirs”(The Blacks) in the French edition of The Americans,

124 Ibid., 363.

125 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 27. For depictions of Native Americans, see Galassi, Robert Frank in America, plate 72 and 130, and plate 73 for Hispanic laborers. 143

Bosquet provides information on the population of African-Americans in the United

States; as numbers had grown over the past 150 years: 757,000 in 1790; 2,300,000 in

1830; 6,500,000 in 1880; 8,800,000 in 1900; 12,800,000 in 1940; and to 15,000,000 in the mid-1950s.126 Bosquet also points out that there were still 30 states in America banning marriage between a white person and an African American. The French edition further noted that the average income for a white family household was $3,138 versus

$1,533 for an African-American family.127 Although an African American family only earned about half of a white family’s income, through Frank’s lens, many African

Americans still had a car, like other Caucasians, in the hope of experiencing and enjoying the same freedom, convenience, amenity, and well-being that a car could provide. With text in the French edition, we can contextualize Frank’s images better in relation to specific historical and socio-economic data. Despite the difference of the annual income, race, or social status, the automobile seems to have been an object offering the appearance of equality.

126 In the French edition, texts are selected and edited by Bosquet, and many of them are critical of the United States. After listing facts and figures about the country, Bosquet grouped the excerpts by topic, including “Space,” “Isolation,” “Uniformity,” “Indians,” and “Blacks,” for example. Greenough, Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 137–138.

127 Alain Bosquet and Robert Frank, Les Américains, 73. 144

The automobile was status on wheels similar to homes and neighborhoods as key signifiers of class and income. As the top two income quintiles of American purchased approximately 70 percent of all new cars, the lower ends of the income spectrum bough used cars. While consumption of automobiles in the 1950s was tied to notions of well-being, satisfaction, pleasure, and comfort, the automobile was a real vehicle of freedom for African Americans among others, especially for many of those who lived in the South. Driving a car enabled these African Americans to escape the racial segregation to a degree of freedom that they did not have on public transportation or in most public places.128

Frank’s commentary on racism is not as direct or seemingly critical as is Gordon

Parks’s. Parks stressed the segregation in the South in his photographs, such as the entrance for colored people in Department Store, Mobile, Alabama, 1956, sundaes for colored customers in Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956, or even water fountains for color people in At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama, 1956.129 On the contrary, in Main Street—Savannah, Georgia, 1955, [2-26] the most piercing detail in the

128 Heitmann, The Automobile and American Life, 135–137.

129 Gordon Parks, Gordon Parks: Segregation Story (New York: The Gordon Parks Foundation, 2015). 145

scene is the furtive glance cast by a prim white girl at the far right toward the forlorn young black man, while Frank photographed the pedestrians waiting for the traffic light to change, juxtaposed with the cacophonous jumble of commercial sign on the street.130

While Parks often photographed the signs of segregation directly, Frank showed his acute sensitivity to racism in a more intricate and convoluted fashion.131

Frank’s photographic road trip across the country was an overwhelming experience, and he tried to present what he felt by photographing those faces, those people, and the kind of underlying violence of that time.132 Not only did Frank have the perspective of an outsider in The Americans, he also was occasionally treated like one during the trip. When Frank interacted with a group of young people and photographed them in front of a high school in Port Gibson, Mississippi, the kids asked Frank if he was from New York and what was he doing there. Frank replied: “I’m just taking pictures. For myself—just to see.” The youngsters then said: “He must be a Communist. He looks like

130 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 28–29, pl. 67.

131 His contact sheets show that Frank did initially photograph the signs for “white” and “colored” that he so frequently encountered when he was in the South like Gordon Parks often did. Nonetheless, Frank later decided not to do so as he ventured deeper into the South, his objectives became more layered and nuanced, he rejected these easier and more obvious representations. Greenough, Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 122.

132 Morris et al., Photography within the Humanities, 54. 146

one. Why don’t you go to the other side of town and watch the niggers play?”133 From this conversation, these local young people apparently treated Frank with malice. Another more serious and unpleasant incident occurred in Arkansas where the State Police stopped and detained Frank on U.S. 65 because he looked suspicious and had numerous papers in foreign languages, cameras, and the Guggenheim application with a reference to a Russian surname, Brodovitch. Frank was questioned by policemen and a special inspector because they thought he might be a Communist. Frank told Evans that he was furious before he was released. He also expressed concern about the process of his naturalization because he was fingerprinted, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation would keep him on file.134 This was the most humiliating experience for Frank on his trip. Although he was going to become a naturalized American citizen, his doubts, skepticism, and criticism about America in the throes of McCarthyism remain.135

The Beginning, the Unseen, and the End

133 Robert Frank, The Lines of My Hand, (Rochester, NY: Lustrum Press, 1972), n.p.

134 Alexey Brodovitch was the art director of Harper’s Bazaar at the time and from 1934 to 1958. After Frank came to New York, he soon won a job shooting fashion accessories in the studio of Harper’s Bazaar. Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 10. In addition to Brodovitch, Frank was questioned about the names of his children by the police, and both Pablo and Andrea are foreign names as well. For the police report and the letter Frank wrote Evans about the incident, see Tucker, Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia, 24––26. The police also questioned Frank’s clearance to photograph at the Ford automobile factory in Detroit and the permission for the shooting-to-be at the Oil Refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana provided by Standard Oil, New York.

135 Morris et al., Photography within the Humanities, 54. 147

Frank subtly divided The Americans into four parts, and each section begins with an American flag. The first image in the book is Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey, [2-27] on the occasion of the town’s centennial anniversary. Frank took a frontal shot of an

American flag he saw on the street, but slightly cropped it. Unlike conventional photographs of a centennial parade, which might focus on the celebration and the joyfulness of the people, Frank turned his camera on the people in the house watching the parade. He nearly symmetrically composed an image of two figures in separate windows.

The face of the woman on the left is obscured by shadow, while that of the other woman on the right is hidden by the American flag. Both figures are difficult to identify. The presence of the flag, symbol of the nation, further compounds the irony and the alienation.136 The image is ambiguous and complex. In regard to the concept of hiding behind the flag, one might wonder if Frank was alluding to individuals and people’s identity sometimes being veiled by the nation because of surveillance and fear of red scare, especially during the Cold War and McCarthyism.

Frank’s Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey therefore seems provide a provocative comparison to update the America depicted in Evans’s Sidewalk and Shop Front, New

136 Lesley Baier, “Visions of Fascination and Despair: The Relationship between Walker Evans and Robert Frank,” Art Journal, vol. 41, no. 1, Photography and the Scholar/Critic (Spring, 1981), 58. 148

Orleans, 1935, the fifth image of American Photographs. [2-28] Regardless of the difference of the occasion, the stripes of the American flag creates a compelling visual dialogue with the stripes of the storefront of the hair salon. The subjects are portrayed frontally in both images. Nevertheless, in Evans’s picture, the scene is brighter and the woman is posing at ease with a direct gaze and more friendly expression, as the photographer set up the tripod and his camera. Taken during the Depression, Evans’s photograph paradoxically demonstrates more optimistic and cheerful feeling, while

Frank’s contrasting picture suggests the alienation, malaise, and anxiety of postwar, atomic-age America.137

As Greenough argues, the first photograph and the following images of the first section of The Americans mainly portray faces of Americans and are designed to introduce the themes that the book will explore: “the immense, even ruthless power of the country’s political, military, and business leaders; the lack of power of its poor; the alienation of its youth; the isolation of its wealthy; the boredom of its middle class; and the ineffectiveness and lack of true insight of all.”138

137 Cotkin, “The Photographer in the Beat-Hipster Idiom: Robert Frank’s The Americans,” 24.

138 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 185. 149

As mentioned in Chapter 1, Lincoln Kirstein asserted that Evans has provided

“the physiognomy of the nation” in American Photographs; the term also well describes

Frank’s The Americans, but a postwar, atomic-aged America instead of a Depression-Era one.139 On one hand, the similarity of the subject matter speaks to the iconographic dialogue that Frank wished to establish in relation to Evans’s legacy. On the other hand,

Frank’s apparatus, technique, intention, and even identity all lead to the difference of his work from Evans’s in regard to style, connotation, and complexities related to the socio-economic context. While Evans’s photographs are more methodically framed, more straightforward and detached, and often possibly sanitized of social content through aestheticization, Frank’s are more casual, personal, involved and entangled, especially when seizing the fleeting moment and alluding to the complicated mood and atmosphere beyond the picture frame.

Of some 27,000 frames taken in 767 rolls of films for The Americans, only 83 prints are included in the book. In his Hoover Dam, Nevada, 1955, [2-29] taken during the trip but not selected for the book, Frank snapped a rack of postcards at a gift shop at

Hoover Dam. The three postcards on display coincidentally manifest the past, present,

139 Lincoln Kirstein, “Photographs of America: Walker Evans” in American Photographs (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2012), 191–200. 150

and future of America. From top to bottom, the first postcard depicts a view of the Grand

Canyon area shown intact like virgin land of the past. The second postcard portrays a contemporary view of Hoover Dam as it looked during Frank’s visit. The third postcard captures the mushroom cloud following the test of a nuclear weapon in the Nevadan desert. Each of these three postcards on the rack demonstrates the wonder of America in its own way.

Although the photograph is not included in the book, probably because it did not fit into the overarching narrative or relate to other themes, Frank obviously was struck by the way Americans treat nature and technology and intended to comment on this circumstance by recording the seemingly absurd product of popular imagery. For some tourists, the postcard of the mushroom cloud may have represented a spectacle of the technologically sublime in landscape. For others, the impact of these nuclear tests on the land and near people was terrifying and dangerous. It is perplexing that the mushroom cloud postcard became a commodity, a souvenir for tourists.140

140 Between 1945 and 1962, there were more than two hundreds known nuclear tests conducted by the United States military. On April, 22, 1952, there was even a “News Nob,” strategic spot positioned seven miles from the Nevada Test Site as a designated area for journalists to photograph the nearby atomic detonations. The need for recording and reporting the process and aftermath of the tests had produced countless images. Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Posing by the Cloud,” in Camera Atomica, ed. John O’Brian (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2015), 109. Also see a selection of pictures made by LIFE photographer Loomis Dean in the Nevada desert in 1955, accessed July 14, 2016, http://time.com/3675016/nevada-a-bomb-test/ 151

Frank was trying to do what he was set out to do, “the photographing of

America…the things that are there, anywhere and everywhere—easily found, not easily selected and interpreted,” as he stated in the Guggenheim Fellowship application.141 On the 10th anniversary of the use of the atomic bomb at the time, Frank not only showed his own skepticism and anxiety, but also growing American concern about modern life.142

By picturing a postcard of a mushroom cloud sold at the Hoover Dam, Frank not only reflected on visual culture but also commented on issues of the technological advancement in America. Along with depictions of the automobile culture, these themes in Frank’s photographs display an acrimonious philosophical questioning, echoing what

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944):

Interested parties explain the culture industry in technological terms. It is alleged that because millions participate in it, certain reproduction processes are necessary that inevitably require identical needs in innumerable places to be satisfied with

141 Tucker, Robert Frank: From New York to Nova Scotia, 20.

142 In 1955, several incidents gained international attention, and Americans were concerned about the effects of nuclear proliferation to humans, including collaborations between U.S. physicians and Japanese with regard to the effects of the bomb and the account of a Japanese-American woman who had returned to Japan to marry before the war. Warner Wells, a surgeon from the University of North Carolina, learned that Michihiko Hachiya, Director of the Communications Hospital, had written a diary during his 56-day hospitalization for wounds from the bomb, and Wells sought him out and received permission to have the diary translated for publication. Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6–September 30, 1945 was published in English in 1955, and book reviews were featured by The New York Times, Saturday Review, Newsweek, and Atlantic Monthly, among others. See Robert W. Miller, “Historical Vignette: Hiroshima, 1955,” in Radiation Research, 155, no. 2 (February, 2001). Also Sarah Robey, unpublished manuscript, The Atomic American: Citizenship in a Nuclear State, 1945–1963 (Philadelphia: Temple University). 152

identical goods…A technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself. It is the coercive nature of society alienated from itself. Automobiles, bombs, and movies keep the whole thing together until their leveling element shows its strength in the every wrong which it furthered. It has made the technology of culture industry no more than the achievement of standardization and mass production, sacrificing whatever involved a distinction between the logic of the work and that of the social system.143

“Automobiles, bombs, and movies” not only triangulate the culture industry but also manifest “the civilization born here and spreading elsewhere.”144 America was at its best because of the automobiles, bombs, and movies. Through ceaselessly merchandizing automobiles, screening Hollywood movies, and testing nuclear weapons, American hegemony was pervasive and powerful economically, culturally, and politically. The nation and the world was operated and dominated by this social system. This account preludes what Frank stated in his renewal application: “I believe in most of these photographs I have expressed my strong opinion toward the subject…sometimes critical and satiric. In this large project unity is achieved through the visual impact of the present.”145 Although Hoover Dam might not relate to other pictures in the book

143 The quote comes from the chapter, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Accessed May 26, 2016, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm

144 See Frank’s 1955 Guggenheim Fellowship application. Tucker, Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia, 20.

145 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 363. 153

iconographically, it shares the mentality with other pictures metaphorically and philosophically, which crystallized Frank’s intention of the project, picturing the outlook of America.

For the book’s final image of the 83 prints, Frank selected U.S. 90, en route to

Del Rio, Texas, 1956, a car parked on the roadside with a woman and two kids. [2-30]

This is actually a photograph of his own family when they traveled together from Texas to Los Angeles.146 Mary, Frank’s wife, looks tired, as do the children, Pablo and Andrea.

The children probably were sleeping during the trip until they sensed that they had stopped; Frank was taking pictures of them so they started to show direct engagement with the camera over the next few frames. The picture looks bright due to overexposure.

Frank actually photographed this in the dark, probably around 4 a.m. as he recalled. The headlights are on, and the neon sign “Truck Rates” in the next few frames, included in later editions, is also lit. They stopped at a roadside café, which, according to its sign, offered Bar-B-Q spare ribs. The diner was open for business with its neon sign lit as

146 Conversation with Philip Brookman during archival visit at the National Gallery of Art, July 31, 2015. Mary and two children joined Frank in Houston. Earlier in the summer of 1955, Mary also headed south to the South Carolina coast and just over the Georgia border near Savannah with Frank. Robert Frank Collection, National Gallery of Art. Also noted in Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 24. For more detailed travelogue, Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 367. 154

well.147

Although Frank traveled mostly alone on his cross-country road trip for the

Guggenheim project, this part of the journey became a family trip. Frank identified himself and his family with car culture in this. He allowed the viewer to connect with his own experience, and embraced as part of his life what he had commented on during the trip.148 This photograph is therefore confessional and personal. It also stands with the millions of clichéd, banal, and popular photographs taken by and for loved ones while traveling on the road. By concluding with a family photo, Frank speaks to the common experience of being on the road as an individual with his family just like many other ordinary American families. This fitting final photograph also shows Frank’s signature and suggests his authorship.149

Conclusion

Frank set the tone for the American photographic cross-country road trips, and

147 Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, Contact Sheet, 83. The exact time when Frank took the photograph is mentioned in “I told you wait in the car,” and the passage describes “poor little kids can’t keep their eyes open on Route 90 Texas at 4 A.M.” Frank, The Lines of My Hand (New York: Pantheon, 1989), unpaginated.

148 Day, Robert Frank’s The Americans, 91.

149 Ibid., 157. 155

The Americans became a pivotal series in the development of road photography.150 His photographs continue and diverge from ones taken in the 1930s, and the book is especially indebted, iconographically and structurally, to Evans’s American Photographs.

While The Americans may seem similar to Evans’s earlier volume, in many ways, these two books are considerably different in style, historical context, and socio-economic approach. They also are different because of the intention, identity, and interpretation of the photographers. The dominant culture of postwar America is often characterized by two words: affluence and anxiety.151 Frank’s photographs are more provocative and critical, even iconoclastic. His personal vision of America is more irreverent, sardonic, and subjective than those of Evans and Lange. It is not the content but the ideological vantage point that separates Frank’s depiction of America from those of other

150 The recent exhibition and catalogue, The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip, begins with Robert Frank. Although the essay deals with the photographic road trip in general, including prewar photographs and visual culture, the exhibition opens with works by Frank and by post-Frank artists. The curator argues that Frank is arguably the one who secured the genre in the long history of road photography. David Campany, The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip (New York: Aperture Foundation, 2014). David Campany, Artist and Curator Talk at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, February 26, 2016.

151 Tina Olsin Lent, Situating The Americans: Robert Frank and the Transformation of American Photography (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1994), 253. Frank did not celebrate the affluence but address the opposite or the incompetence of affluence, as evidence in the lack of power of the poor; the alienation of the youth; the isolation of the wealthy; and the boredom of the middle class. Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 185. 156

photographers, and so outraged his critics.152 While Lange and Evans were mostly supported by a government agency, Frank was funded by the Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed him more artistic freedom in the project. Like other avant-garde artists,

Frank explored formal innovation, embraced autobiographical content, and cultivated the persona of the artist as social outsider and cultural critic.153

The physiognomy of the nation was changing, so was the physiognomy of photography. While Evans occasionally photographed with a 35 mm to capture some fleeting scenes and moments, Frank solely used a 35 mm Leica for the duration of his project. Frank, therefore, developed and exploited the snapshot style and aesthetic in his photographs, renewing a tradition of documentary photography. In a statement that Frank wrote shortly before The Americans was published, he said: “It is important to see what is invisible to others. Perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness. Also it is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph.”154 This outsider perspective and the sense of instantaneity make Frank’s photographs seem less

152 Tina Olsin Lent, Situating The Americans: Robert Frank and the Transformation of American Photographs, 132.

153 Ibid., 251.

154 Papageorge, Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An Essay on Influence, 5. 157

unmediated and thus more authentic. Frank’s photographs also share some ideas with the

Beat Generation or the Hipster, such as the kinetic qualities of modern existence personified in Dean Moriarty in Kerouac’s On the Road, who thrives on fast automobiles and open highways. Like the Beatnik or Hipster, sometimes experimental and existential,

Frank was also involved in a constant search for an authentic self, a valid voice.155

Frank’s connections to the Beat-Hipster mentality was reinforced by his close collaboration with Kerouac; when Frank’s volume of photographs had been rejected by publishers because of its depressing, un-American nature, Kerouac stated in the introduction to the book that “You got eyes.”156

In his photographs of cars, highways, roadside kills, jukeboxes, televisions, and drive-in theaters, Frank exemplified the type of critique by Beat and Hipster writers that had begun to develop in commentary about the materialistic, alienating, and absurd character of American culture. This would be instrumental to the counter-culture and like-minded photographic movements of the 1960s. Therefore, the style, imagery, interpretation, and content of The Americans might be understood as a photographic

155 George Cotkin, “The Photographer in the Beat-Hipster Idiom: Robert Frank’s The Americans,” 20.

156 Ibid., 21. For Kerouac’s original quote, see “Introduction” in The Americans (New York: SCALO, 2000), 9. 158

analogue to the Beat-Hipster vision of America.157 Like the Beat and Hipster, Frank rejects or is rejected by the conventional mainstream culture and therefore becomes alienated and free to live intensely and experientially.158 Frank’s work is groundbreaking and controversial, yet his photographic style shares some qualities with other contemporary art forms, such as the gesturalism of Abstract Expressionism and spontaneity and improvisation of contemporary Jazz music.159

Frank was keen to see through the pretension of America’s postwar prosperity to its underbelly of inequality, banality, and alienation.160 Although some of Frank’s photographs from the Guggenheim project were introduced earlier in Camera magazine, the U.S Camera Annual in 1957, and Pageant magazine in April 1958, its shock was not fully felt until Grove Press finally released The Americans in January of 1960.161 For the editors of Popular Photography magazine, The Americans was regarded as “the most

157 George Cotkin, “The Photographer in the Beat-Hipster Idiom: Robert Frank’s The Americans,” 26, 31.

158 Lent, Situating The Americans, 274.

159 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 19.

160 Ibid., 37.

161 Tom Maloney, “Robert Frank” in U.S. Camera 1958 (New York: U.S. Camera, 1957), 91-114. Byron Dobell, “One Man’s U.S. A.” Pageant 13 (April, 1958), 24–35. Robert Frank’s The Americans was not issued until January 15, 1960. See Stuart Alexander, The Criticism of Robert Frank’s The Americans, 25–26. 159

controversial photographic book of the year.”162 The public reception of The Americans was vitriolic partly due to the mix of postwar euphoria and cultural paranoia of the late

1950s. One reviewer remarked: “Frank is sensitive, but apparently he is without love…These are images of an America seen by a joyless man who hates the country of his adoption.”163 Only less than half of the nearly 2,600 printed copies were sold, while the rest were remaindered.164 During the cultural upheaval of the late 1960s, nearly a decade later, the Aperture Foundation decided to re-release The Americans.165 The book would then resonate with what many people felt about America and Frank would be reconsidered for his stature in his generation and influence on later photographers. As a result, Frank observed that more people gradually recognized and understood his language, leading them to become more questioning about all aspects of society.166

Unlike Evans who in 1938 had produced his American Photographs as both an

162 Bruce Downes, ed., “Books of the Year,” in Photography Annual 1961 (New York: Ziff-Davis, 1960), 198. Also mentioned in Stuart Alexander, The Criticism of Robert Frank’s The Americans (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1986), 25.

163 Joshua Chuang, “When the Messenger is the Medium: The Making of Walker Evans’s ‘American Photographs’ and Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans,’” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, Photography at Yale, 2006, 120. Original quote, Bruce Downes et al., “An Off-beat View of the U.S.A,” Popular Photography 46, no. 5 (May 1960): 104.

164 Chuang, “When the Messenger is the Medium,” 120.

165 Robert Frank, The Americans (New York: Aperture, 1969).

166 Ibid., 121. For Frank’s observation, see the original quote in Frank The Lines of My Hand (New York: Lustrum Press, 1972), unpaginated quote from section entitled “America 1955–1956.” 160

exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and a photo-book, Frank’s The

Americans was not organized as an exhibition in its entirety until 1979, two decades after its initial publication.167 In a way, no initial exhibition might suggest the uneasy status of

Frank and The Americans at the time. It further reinforces the idea that Frank preferred his series to be received by the audience as a whole in book form. After the war, magazines provided the largest source of income for photographers and the best public forum for their work. As each magazine hoped to attract the largest possible audience, photographic essays were usually limited to one-dimensional events, and characterizations, and complexity, subtlety, and ambiguity were avoided at all costs.168

Since American journalism also was dominated by a belief in “objective” or “neutral” reporting, Frank’s opportunity to fully and freely express personal opinion was

167 Paul Katz produced the exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York; the show did not adhere to the book’s precise sequence. Prior to this, the most substantial public display of The Americans was a touring exhibition organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1969 to coincide with the release of the book’s second edition; only 76 of the 83 images from the book were included. Chuang, “When the Messenger is the Medium,” 123. Also see Stuart Alexander, Robert Frank: A Bibliography.

168 In 1952, Edward Steichen encouraged Frank to probe “beyond environment into the soul of man,” reminding him “we as photographers must seek to penetrate deeper and closer into our brothers.” Frank took this advice to heart and went to the village of Caerau, Wales, in March 1953 to photograph a miner, Ben James for several days. His studies of James and his fellow miners are intensely intimate, both physically and emotionally, and were taken at very close distance as if Frank were a miner himself. While Steichen recognized the strength of the series and included eight of the photographs in his 1953 exhibition Post-War European Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the same sequence was once again rejected by Life magazine like several previous ones. Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 31, 33. Moreover, Frank was clear that once he embarked on the Guggenheim fellowship, he wanted to express his opinion of America. He noted that for several years, he had to devise a structure for grouping his photographs that would “stand up” to Life magazines and their “god-damned stories with a beginning and end.” Greenough et al., Looking in Robert Frank’s The Americans, 176–177. 161

restricted.169 Therefore, for Frank, “making a book was the whole point of it…There’s no compromise, you understand the simplicity, you understand the photographs. That was the key.”170 In essence, Frank’s The Americans certainly was indebted to Evans’s

American Photographs. In an era of institutional neglect for photography, books served as primary agents for both Evans and Frank for delivering their artistic messages more directly. As Joshua Chuang argues, these books are authentic works of art, and their artistry resides as much in the integrity of their renderings as the connections made between them.171

As shown, visual treatment, metaphor, and juxtaposition in The Americans create complexity. Frank’s intentions can often be found in his sequencing, which not only produced multiple layers of interpretation, but also delivered more critical messages materialistically and metaphorically—such as the sequence of a covered car, a covered body, and the open highway or a statue holding a cross facing a gas station, three crosses on the roadside, and the automobile assembly line among others. Frank treated his sequencing more provocatively than Evans. The audience could “read” Frank’s doubts,

169 William S. Johnson, “Public Statements/Private Views,” 81–82.

170 Chuang, “When the Messenger is the Medium,” 123.

171 Ibid., 109. 162

skepticism, and criticism of the material world in postwar America throughout the book.

Frank worked hard to achieve a geographic and thematic range to measure the nation.172

The Americans also became a small encyclopedia of photographic forms and styles.

Frank successfully mixed idioms, varied styles, and developed new pictorial schemes with monumental effect, which inspired many later photographers.173 The road not only was a central theme but also a means of reaching a destination.174 For Frank, a cross-country road trip was the way of seeing, experiencing, and picturing America, and

The Americans was the photographic documentation of his journey.

172 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 25.

173 Jonathan Green, American Photography: A Critical History 1945 to the Present (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984), 182–183. Also in Peter Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 31.

174 Galassi, Robert Frank in America, 20. 163

CHAPTER 3

DOUBLE STANDARD: ED RUSCHA AND LEE FRIEDLANDER IN THE 1960S

Borrowing the title from Dennis Hopper’s Double Standard, 1961, [3-1] this chapter refers to two photographic practices both closely associated with traveling on the road at that time: Ed Ruscha’s Pop art and Conceptualist affinity, and Lee Friedlander’s snapshot yet sophisticated formalist style. As shown in the photograph, Dennis Hopper was at an intersection toward two directions, perhaps metaphorically comparable with the development of American road photography in the 1960s. Ruscha and Friedlander were both indebted to the earlier tradition of Walker Evans and Robert Frank who had photographed America on the road. Ruscha and Friedlander, however, took different directions.

As examined in previous chapters, it is clear over time that themes of the automobile, highway, and roadside became a genre in American photography. Since

Frank reaffirmed the photographic road trip as a tradition in the 1950s, the road continued as a muse for artists and photographers in the 1960s. Works by Ruscha and Friedlander embody drastically different artistic dimensions and photographic appearances, yet still 164

suggest some shared tendencies in the artistic landscape from the 1960s. They not only continued the quest for/questioning of the self and the country but also provided a springboard for photographers in later decades.

This chapter investigates works by Ruscha and Friedlander, who responded to this photographic road trip tradition in the 1960s. The chapter first examines several notable series by Ruscha and then miscellaneous photographs taken by Friedlander until the early 1970s.1 In Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962, Ruscha recorded his stops at gas stations on U.S 66 between Los Angles and Oklahoma City. The series is autobiographic, cinematic, banal, and emulates the snapshot aesthetic that Frank explored earlier. As a

Pop artist, Ruscha’s work also exemplifies the taste, language, and subject matter of Pop art. His work is “about art through the world” with the Conceptualist spirit and method.2

The Conceptualist attitude also can be found in his Every Building on the Sunset Strip,

1966 and Royal Road Test, 1967, both road-related series. Ruscha treats photography as a document or vehicle of artistic ideas, different from other professional documentary and

1 Subsequently, Friedlander’s most recent cross-country series, America by Car, 2010 will be analyzed in Chapter 5.

2 In the introduction for a later exhibition, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, curator William Jenkins makes a distinction between Ruscha’s series and the work of the New Topographics artists. Although they seem to share similar appearances, the former is “about art through the world,” while the latter is “about the world through art.” See New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape (Rochester, NY: International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, 1975), 5. 165

fine art photographers.

The chapter then investigates photographs by Friedlander during his early career.

Friedlander was engaged more directly and actively with the photographic tradition established by Evans and Frank than Ruscha, exploiting the form and exploring the world on the road. Friedlander carried on Frank’s snapshot aesthetic; nevertheless, his seeming snapshots result from his pre-visualization of the chaotic contemporary vernacular landscape that also connected him to Evans’s analytical formalist style.3 Moreover,

Friedlander continued supplementing the genre of automobiles, highways, and roadside landscapes by relentlessly photographing signs, reflections, side-view mirrors, and TV screens in the motels, which formed not only the photographer’s surroundings while the shutter was released but also the actual scenes that travelers encountered on the road.

Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations: The Theory of Everything

In 1962, Ruscha made Twentysix Gasoline Stations, the first of a series of 16 photographic books that the artist produced until 1978.4 Most of Ruscha’s photographic

3 Miles Orvell, American Photography (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 127.

4 Although the book often is dated to 1963, the first edition of this series was copyrighted and published in 1962. Kevin Hatch, “‘Something Else’: Ruscha’s Photographic Books,” October, vol. 111 (Winter, 2005), 109, fn. 9. Twentysix Gasoline Stations was self-published in 1962, first edition, 400 unsigned, numbered copies. 500 unsigned, unnumbered copies were published for the second edition in 1967. 3,000 unsigned, unnumbered copies were published for the third edition in 1969. See Maurice Tuckman, Art in Los Angeles: Seventeen Artists in the Sixties (Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1981), 95. For a 166

books were self-published. They are large editions produced on high-speed professional presses and serve as a rejection of the tradition of limited-edition, handcrafted artist’s books. Most feature snapshot-like photographs that Ruscha made with his twin-lens reflex 2-1/4” format Yashica camera.5 Twelve of these books are devoted to landscape or still life. Each was conceived as a repertory of prosaic subjects, such as, gasoline stations, apartment houses, parking lots, cakes, or palm trees.6 His photographic books seem to be a conundrum and refuse to acquiesce to easy categorization or to reconcile with traditional histories of photography and art.7

The roadside, driving, and highway experiences became the key feature in some of Ruscha’s work, including Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962; Every Building on the

Sunset Strip, 1966; and Royal Road Test, 1967 among others. In these series, Ruscha embodied his complex and ambivalent relationship to photography. The amateurish and snapshot visual quality of Ruscha’s photographs intrigued his contemporaries. His work is unconventional and difficult to define. It is neither purely documentary nor purely

complete list of the sixteen photographic books with descriptions, see Margit Rowell, Ed Ruscha Photographer (Göttingen: Steidl; NY: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2006), 167–170.

5 “In Focus: Ed Ruscha, ” accessed June, 20, 2016, http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/focus_ruscha/

6 Rowell, Ed Ruscha Photographer, 11.

7 Mark Rawlinson, “Like Trading Dust for Oranges: Ed Ruscha and Things of Interest,” in Various Small Books: Referencing Various Small Books by Ed Ruscha (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013), 8. 167

artistic, and the subject matter was stereotypical and banal. The motifs of his work are drawn mostly from ordinary outdoor sites in Southern California or the western United

States. The presentation of most of his book projects as strings of consecutive images further created a mythical road-movie or photo-novel effect related to Beat Generation innuendo.8

Twentysix Gasoline Stations was Ruscha’s first photographic book and perhaps his foremost. As Margit Rowell notes “the imperfect resolution of certain photographs, the empty bands of road in the foregrounds, the stereotypical architecture and tacky commercial signage, and the complete absence of human activity rather suggest an amateur photographer on a road trip, clicking the shutter and moving on.”9 The series was intriguing not only because of what was photographed, but also how the theme was delivered.

Ruscha took to the road as early as 14; in the summer of 1954, he and a friend hitchhiked from Oklahoma City to Florida.10 After receiving first prize in Graphic

8 Rowell, Ed Ruscha Photographer, 11.

9 Ibid., 18.

10 Michael Auping, “A Long Drive” in Ed Ruscha: Road Tested (Fort Worth, TX: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2011), 13. 168

Design from the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce and graduating from high school,

Ruscha arrived in Los Angeles in 1956 to attend Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts).

He made the trip with his high school friend Mason Williams, later a song-writer, coincidentally driving a variant 1950 Ford like Frank had done before him. The trip from

Oklahoma City to Los Angeles was not only life-changing but like a rite of passage for

Ruscha.11 Over the next seven years, Ruscha drove between Los Angeles and Oklahoma

City several times, often documenting his journey by taking snapshots of gas stations along U.S. 66.12

In his Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Ruscha documented 26 gas stations along the way from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City, where he grew up.13 The series is not entirely random or arranged, and these photographs intimately relate to artist’s autobiography.14

Similar to Frank’s U.S. 90, en route to Del Rio, Texas in a way, [2-30] Ruscha’s

11 Ibid., See also Michael Auping, “Street Talk with Ed Ruscha” in Ed Ruscha: Road Tested, 47. Ruscha did not have a camera during the 1956 trip. He had one soon after arriving in Los Angeles. Ruscha drove a 1950 Ford sedan, his first car probably bought in 1953; Frank drove a used 1950 Business Coupe for his Guggenheim road trip.

12 Jaleh Mansoor, “Ed Ruscha’s One-Way Street” in October, vol. 111 (Winter, 2005), 127.

13 Although Ed Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the family moved to Oklahoma City in 1941 and lived there for 15 years until Ruscha went to college in California in 1956. Ruscha graduated in 1960 from Chouinard Art Institute, taking classes in photography, graphic design, art history, and studio art. For Ruscha’s selected chronology, see Rowell, Ed Ruscha Photographer, 174–175.

14 Hatch, “‘Something Else’: Ruscha’s Photographic Books,” 110. 169

photographs were personal and a variety of travel narrative. It is about 1,350 miles along

U.S. 66 between the two cities;15 most of the shots were taken by day in varying degrees of light. The only exceptions are three nocturne scenes—one in Daggett, California; and a few frames later, two consecutive ones in Tucumcari, New Mexico and Amarillo, Texas.

Ruscha’s trip, therefore, presumably took three days and two nights.16

In an interview before the 50th anniversary of the book, Ruscha stated “I just had a personal connection to that span of mileage between Oklahoma and California.”17 For understanding the banality of the highway, he explained: “I don’t have any Seine River like Monet. I just have U.S. 66 between Oklahoma and Los Angeles.”18 The driving experience and the roadside landscapes along U.S. 66 inevitably became a muse and theme. In contrast to the Seine, the camera, and more importantly, the car, would function

15 While several scholars offer different approximate mileage between Los Angeles and Oklahoma City from 1,300, 1,350, to 1,400, it should be 1,348 miles according to the mileage chart in 1954. Leahy’s Hotel-Motel Guide & Travel Atlas of the United State, Canada, and Mexico (Chicago: American Hotel Register Co., 1954), 112.

16 Eleanor Antin, “Reading Ruscha,” Art in America, vol. 61, November, 1973, 66.

17 In the Archive: Ed Ruscha’s “Twentysix Gasoline Station,” accessed May 15, 2014. http://blogs.utexas.edu/culturalcompass/2013/11/13/in-the-archive-ed-ruschas-twentysix-gasoline-stations/.

18 Edward Ruscha, “A Conversation Between Walter Hopps and Ed Ruscha, September 1992,” in Romance with Liquids: Paintings 1966–1969 (New York: Gagosian Gallery and Rizzoli, 1993), reprinted in Alexandra Schwartz ed., Leave Any Information at the Signal (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002), 312–328. 170

as a frame for everything he saw, translating the experience of the road.19

Ruscha’s work may be considered the most authentic counterpart to the paintings and photographs of the 1930s depicting the American scene. This “unique

American style” may address not only the sociological aspect, but also Ruscha’s perception of visual culture from a personal standpoint. Ruscha explained:

In the early 1950s I was awakened by the photographs of Walker Evans and the movies of John Ford, especially Grapes of Wrath where the poor “Okies” (mostly farmers whose land dried up) go to California with mattresses on their cars rather than stay in Oklahoma and starve. I faced a sort of black-and-white cinematic emotional identity crisis myself in this respect—sort of a showdown with myself—a little like trading dust for oranges. On the way to California I discovered the importance of gas stations. They are like trees because they are there. They were not chosen because they were pop-like but because they have angles, colors and shapes, like trees. There were just there, so they were not in my visual focus because they were supposed to be social-nerve endings.20

Ruscha was convinced to go West, to pursue the new frontier in California, because he believed that there was no room for an artist to grow and develop in Oklahoma. When he was considering art school, he knew he had to trade dust for oranges just like the “Okies”

19 Mansoor, “Ed Ruscha’s One-Way Street,” 128.

20 Bernard Brunon, “Interview with Edward Ruscha” in Alexandra Schwartz, Leave Any Information at the Signal, 41. Also mentioned in Rowell, Ed Ruscha Photographer, 250. Originally published in Edward Ruscha (Lyon: Musée Saint Pierre Art Contemporain/Octobre des Arts, 1985), 89–97. 171

in the 1930s.21 He also explained: “The western part of the United States has deep meaning for me, as opposed to the eastern part and the rest of the world. That’s where I like to explore and where I like to be.”22 Ruscha associated the East with steel and industrialism, whereas the West was space and sunrises and sunsets. The California culture was different from that of Oklahoma, and he also was drawn to speedy cars among other glamorous aspects in Los Angeles.23

It is not surprising that Ruscha identified with the “Okies” since he grew up in

Oklahoma City. More importantly, as a visual person, he also might have been subconsciously aware of the repetitive motifs in John Ford’s 1940 Grapes of Wrath. In that film, the Joads always had to make stops during their journey west, not only to feed themselves but also to feed their car at the gas stations. It also is noteworthy that whenever the Joads pass a river, bridge, or landmark, Ford would offer a shot of a road sign or state marker. Similar to road signs, gas stations became important signifiers to visualize the journey along U.S. 66. Thus, making stops at gas stations and inevitably

21 Karin Breuer, Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, (San Francisco, CA: Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2016), 11.

22 Martin Gayford, “Ed Ruscha Interview,” The Telegraph, September 25, 2009, accessed August 5, 2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/6224022/Ed-Ruscha-interview.html

23 Breuer, Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, 11–12. 172

encountering these places became common for every motorist traveling between

Oklahoma City and Los Angeles, including Ruscha.

Not only was Ruscha aware of Ford’s and perhaps Lange’s visual legacies, and identified with the “Okies,” but he also had read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as a child, which kick-started Ruscha’s dreams of going to California.24 At the age of ten,

Ruscha spend a whole year at Hawthorne Elementary School working on a major art project with his close friend Mason Williams—a mural of the Oklahoma Land Run with the horses and all.25 The Land Run of 1889 was not only a significant event in America’s westward expansion, but also seminal to the history and development of Oklahoma. This is part of the collective memory and cultural heritage that Lange and Paul Schuster Taylor also mention in their 1939 book An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion.26

While in college, Ruscha took photography classes, which largely were devoted to photographic techniques and camera usage. He also was introduced to the history of

24 Colleen Terry, “Ruscha’s West: A Selected Chronology,” in Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, ed. Karin Breuer, 194.

25 Paul Karlstrom, “Interview with Edward Ruscha in His Western Avenue, Hollywood Studio,” in Alexandra Schwartz, Leave Any Information at the Signal, 101. Also in Breuer, Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, 11. Complete transcript: California Oral History Project, Paul Karlstrom’s interview with Edward Ruscha, October 29, 1980–October 2, 1981, Archives of American Art (AAA), Smithsonian Institution.

26 Lange and Taylor included a historical image of the 1889 Land Run in Oklahoma on page 45 of their An American Exodus, referencing the history of moving westward and settlers looking for the land of opportunity. See discussion in Chapter One, 49, 53. 173

photography and works by Walker Evans and Robert Frank in graphic design courses.27

Even though he only saw works in reproduction, Ruscha was enthusiastic about Evans’s work.

Evans was a profound influence on me….You could tell that he gave thought to the abstract qualities of a picture….One of the first pictures I saw of Evans’s was a photograph from the air, looking down on a bunch of Model A-looking automobiles, and it was raining in a little town in New York.28

Noticeably, the standard-issue automobiles framed by the calligraphic silhouettes of barren trees in Evans’s Parked Cars and Elm Trees on Broadway, from High Elevation,

Saratoga Springs, New York, 1931, [1-4] specifically anticipate Ruscha’s repetition of similar forms and scrupulous rendering of a subject, time, and place in his series.

Robert Frank was another photographer who had a profound impact on Ruscha.

Ruscha still vividly remembered the time and place he picked up Frank’s The Americans:

“I saw [the book] when it first came out, and I knew that it was a landmark statement. He captured America so beautifully, at a particular historical time. That had a heavy impact on my thinking, and yet the imagery doesn’t necessarily translate into any kind of direct

27 Rowell, Ed Ruscha Photographer, 12.

28 Sylvia Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography (NY: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2004), 20. 174

influence on my work.”29 Still, Frank “influenced me through the back door,” Ruscha explained.30 More than the subject matter, Frank’s rejection of an artful aesthetic seemed to be captured in Ruscha’s photographs. Their works both represented idiosyncratic style and were remarkably thought-provoking.31 On one hand, Ruscha was moved not only by the power of Frank’s pictures, but also by how and what they illustrated about postwar

America. On the other hand, he was intimidated by such a convincing artistic voice, which made him not want to be a photographer because of Frank’s shocking style.32

It is important to acknowledge that the title of Twentysix Gasoline Stations came first. Then, it was a simple matter for Ruscha of just “going out and take the pictures,” to find or collect his subject matter.33 For Ruscha, this project was also a kind of reportage:

I had a vision that I was being a great reporter when I did the gas stations. I drove back to Oklahoma all the time, five or six times a year. And I felt there was so much wasteland between L.A. and Oklahoma City that somebody had to bring the news to the city. It was just a simple, straightforward way of getting the news and bringing it back. I think it’s

29 Ibid., 20–21.

30 Ibid., 21.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Rowell, Ed Ruscha Photographer, 17. Ruscha stated that he had the title even before he took the photographs. For the interview of Ruscha, see David Bourdon, “Ruscha as Publisher (or All Booked Up,)” in Schwartz, Leave Any Information at the Signal, 41. 175

one of the best ways of just laying down the facts of what is out there. I didn’t want to be allegorical or mystical or anything like that. It’s nothing more than a training manual for people who want to know about things like that.34

Although Ruscha recognized the photographic tradition established by Evans and Frank, his photographs would manifest different meanings and feelings from his predecessors.

The emphatic avoidance of the mystical or the allegorical, alluding to the text of Jack

Kerouac’s On the Road or photographs of Frank’s The Americans, resulted in Ruscha’s series as being considered proto-photo-conceptualism.35

In order to emphasize the façade of the gas station, Ruscha often photographed from across a street during the day with the sunlight either behind him or from the side.36

In some cases, he allowed considerable distance between himself and his subject. This allowed him to not only record most of the features of the architecture but also produce a certain sense of emptiness, detachedness, and artlessness. Through his contact sheets, it is evident that he exercised a single-mindedness of purpose utilizing his camera more as a recording device than an expressive tool. Unlike Frank or most other photographers who

34 Bourdon, “Ruscha as Publisher (or All Booked Up,)” in Schwartz, Leave Any Information at the Signal, 41. Also mentioned in Rowell, Ed Ruscha Photographer, 17–18.

35 Rawlinson, “Like Trading Dust for Oranges: Ed Ruscha and Things of Interest,” in Various Small Books: Referencing Various Small Books by Ed Ruscha, 12.

36 Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography, 112. 176

usually took several shots from different vantage points to check which one might produce the most satisfying composition and best visual effect, most of the time, Ruscha only made one exposure of each station.37 [3-2]

Moreover, by comparing the original frame in the contact sheets with the final print, some of his contact prints are skewed slightly when being framed in the first place, and the visual effect of the print was adjusted later for the book. This shows the

“deskilling” quality of Ruscha’s photographs. For example, in the original photograph of

Fina–Groom, Texas, the light poles are discernibly more tilted than the ones in the final print. [3-3, 4] Other pictures like Hudson–Amarillo, Texas and Mobil–Shamrock, Texas also needed to be adjusted because of the tilting vertical line of the poles in the original frames. [3-5, 6] In Enco–Conway, Texas, Ruscha not only cropped a large proportion of the plain road surface on the lower half but also had to cut the upper part because a window happened to obstruct the view of the picture.38 [3-7]

Compare, for instance, any of Ruscha’s gas station photographs with Frank’s. In

Frank’s Santa Fe, New Mexico, [2-6] the gas pumps consisted of a circular disk resting on

37 Ibid., 115.

38 Some of the original photographs taken in 1962 were later included in Five Views from the Panhandle, 2007. See Breuer, Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, 63. 177

a rectangular shaft and assuming human proportions; these anthropomorphized pumps endow the scene with a sense of loneliness along with the desolate landscape, the evocativeness of dusk, and the drama of the covering thick cloud. On the contrary, in the photographs in his Twentysix Gasoline Stations, emotion usually is missing from

Ruscha’s small snapshots of gas stations, seemingly out of focus and blurry due to lack of steady hands.39 Rather than a metaphor for the human condition in the United States like

Frank’s picture, Ruscha’s gas station photographs exemplify commercial vernacular dotting the road because of their uniformly deadpan style.40

Although Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962 was published only a few years after Frank’s The Americans, 1958/9, there is a world of difference between these two books. First, Frank’s pictures are made up mostly of people and cars; Ruscha largely excluded these subjects in his volume. Second, Frank intended to direct our attention to the social inequalities that existed across America, whereas Ruscha aimed at a neutral recording, providing just facts, as he claimed. Finally, compared with the standards set by

Evans, Frank, and other masters of the medium, Ruscha’s snapshots were of very poor

39 Cécile Whiting, Pop L.A: Art and the City in the 1960s (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2006), 100–101.

40 Ibid., 101. 178

quality.

These factors are understandable when considering the dimension of Ruscha’s practice. Ruscha actually was engaged in a radically different kind of artistic activity. He explained that the title of Twentysix Gasoline Stations was selected in advance of taking any photograph. Ruscha followed a predetermined route in his car and systematically recorded just the gas stations along US 66. It is this pervasive auto-maticity (instruction, car, route, and camera) that makes Ruscha’s book something new and strange. Margaret

Iversen concluded that Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations had a rule-governed, performative character that drastically contrasts with Evans, Frank and other photographers of American vernacular scenes.41

Ruscha considered photography as an instrument of documenting the artistic intention and perspective of the artist. In a 1972 interview, “I’m Not Really a

Photographer,” with A.D. Coleman, Ruscha clearly and expressively stated:

I pick up a camera and go out and shoot the pictures that I have to shoot. I never take pictures just for the taking of pictures; I’m not interested in that at all. I’m not intrigued that much with the medium.... I want the end product; that’s what I’m really interested in. It’s strictly a medium to use or

41 Margaret Iversen, “Auto-maticity: Ruscha and Performative Photography,” in Photography after Conceptual Art ed. Diarmuid Costello and Margaret Iversen (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 17–18. 179

not to use, and I use it only when I have to.42

Ruscha noted that “Photography’s just a playground for me. I’m not a photographer at all.”43 This shows how Ruscha’s artistic attitude and photographic approach were fundamentally different from earlier photographers, such as Evans, Lange, and Frank.

Ruscha’s primary interest, intention, and purpose, therefore, led to the quality of

“deskilled” and “amateurization” of the series, providing key strategies of future

Conceptual art.44 Conceptual art demonstrates little photographic self-consciousness. It departs from so-called serious photography by a snapshot-like amateurism and nonchalance.45 The amateurism over professionalism, lack of competence over technical skill, and the using of a commercially produced book as opposed to a traditional crafted livre d’artiste all characterized Ruscha’s first, and perhaps foremost, photographic book project, Twentysix Gasoline Stations.

42 A.D. Coleman, “I’m Not Really a Photographer” (1972) in Douglas Fogle, The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960–1982 (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2003), 23. Also in Schwartz, Leave Any Information at the Signal, 53.

43 A.D. Coleman, “I’m Not Really a Photographer” (1972) in Fogle, The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960–1982, 22. Also in Schwartz, Leave Any Information at the Signal, 51.

44 Rawlinson, “Like Trading Dust for Oranges: Ed Ruscha and Things of Interest,” in Various Small Books: Referencing Various Small Books by Ed Ruscha, 14–15. For the “deskilled” quality, see the object label of Twentysix Gasoline Stations at the Whitney Museum of American Art, accessed June, 22, 2016, http://collection.whitney.org/object/18055

45 Nancy Foote, “The Anti-Photographers” in Fogle, The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960–1982, 23. Also mentioned in Rawlinson, “Like Trading Dust for Oranges: Ed Ruscha and Things of Interest,” in Various Small Books: Referencing Various Small Books by Ed Ruscha, 14–15. 180

The playfulness and irony, as well as the tangible temptations from low, mass, popular visual culture turns art away from seriousness: this corresponds with how Pop art had confronted high art with the reality of the trivial and casual. Although the appearance of Ruscha’s pictures may seem casual, the work as a whole is very systematic.46 Many months went into the planning of Twentysix Gasoline Stations, and some 50 stations were photographed before being pared down to 26, Ruscha says “I am dead serious about everything I make.”47 This is part of Ruscha’s humor. He had to be methodical about the series. His series was planned carefully, but the photographs were taken casually.48

Nonetheless, as Ruscha noted, “My pictures are not that interesting, nor the subject matter. They are simply a collection of ‘facts’; my book is more like a collection of ‘readymades.’”49 For Twentysix Gasoline Stations, the intent of the book “is to be out front there, and let people judge for themselves.” Ruscha says: “I don’t have any message

46 Rawlinson, “Like Trading Dust for Oranges: Ed Ruscha and Things of Interest,” in Various Small Books: Referencing Various Small Books by Ed Ruscha, 15. Also in Antin, Reading Ruscha, 66.

47 Willoughby Sharp, “‘A Kind of a Huh’: An Interview with Ed Ruscha” in Leave Any Information, 64–65.

48 Ibid., 65.

49 John Coplans, “Concerning Various Small Fires: Edward Ruscha Discusses His Perplexing Publications,” Artforum, v. 5, February 1965, 24–25, reprinted in Alexandra Schwartz, Leave Any Information at the Signal, 26. In October 1963, Ruscha met Marcel Duchamp at the opening of Duchamp’s retrospective exhibition, By or of Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy, organized by Walter Hopps at Pasadena Art Museum. Terry, “Ruscha’s West: A Selected Chronology,” in Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, ed. Karin Breuer, 196. 181

about the subject matter at all. They’re just natural facts, that’s all they are.”50 For

Ruscha, “The book is the look, not the photograph.”51 Ruscha’s deliberate inversions of the medium were an engagement with it. His book upset the genre of “the book of photographs,” that classical form in which art-photography declares its independence, such as Evans’s American Photographs and Frank’s The Americans, for the conscious collaboration with the aesthetics of administration. Ruscha’s book, however, surrendered photographic independence.52

Recalling his 1956 trip, Ruscha noted that “In those days, we [he and Williams] were obsessed with gas, particularly on those long drives.”53 In an early lithograph from

1962, Ruscha showed his fascination for gas signs in a small boxlike building with gigantic letters spelling GAS, just like Evans and Frank previously had done in their photographs. [3-8; 1-1; 2-6] In Roadside Gas Sign, 1929, the close-up of the word “GAS” that Evans photographed was a roadside gas sign nearly scribbled, offering a view of the vernacular landscape of the fast-growing refueling business. [1-1] Ruscha was inspired

50 Douglas M Davis, “From Common Scenes, Mr. Ruscha Evokes Art” in Leave Any Information, 29.

51 Howardena Pindell, “Words with Ruscha” in Leave Any Information, 62.

52 Jeff Wall, “Marks of Indifference,” in The Last Picture Show, 43. Also mentioned in Rawlinson, “Like Trading Dust for Oranges: Ed Ruscha and Things of Interest,” in Various Small Books: Referencing Various Small Books by Ed Ruscha, 15.

53 Auping, Ed Ruscha: Road Tested, 18. 182

and informed by the gas station and its signage that he saw everywhere on the road and in

California. He deliberately designed and exaggerated the scale of the billboard in contrast to the tiny white door below in his lithograph, not only emulating the curious gaze that

Evans once demonstrated, but also adapting the awesome and monumental feeling that

Frank implied while photographing the SAVE/GAS sign in his Santa Fe, New Mexico,

1955.54 [2-6]

Ruscha’s Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1962, one of the photographs from

Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962, has been interpreted as cinematic. [3-9] He considered this photograph as the model for other depictions, with its baseline perspective and diagonal screaming overhead.55 He was interested not only in the story about this kind of architecture, but was also recalling a memory he had of watching movies when he was young. Ruscha then referred this kind of visual experience to his understandings of the usage of shooting trains traveling while placing the camera down

54 During the production of Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Ruscha also photographed a SAVE/GAS sign in his Save, Flagstaff, Arizona, 1962. The sign seemed similar to the one that Frank photographed in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which suggested that Ruscha was well aware of Frank’s work. See the work print in the collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, accession number 2004.489, accessed October 30, 2016, http://collection.whitney.org/object/21044

55 Ruscha chose to represent Standard as a prototype and later developed other works of the same theme either in painting or print. Rather than Gulf or Shell, Ruscha’s Standard could be any station, anywhere, and anytime. Gerald Silk, Automobile and Culture (New York: Abrams; Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984), 139. 183

near the tracks to create and intensify the dramatic quality.56 Many of Ruscha’s later series are based on or inspired by the same visual format and composition. More importantly, the reason Ruscha had been so involved in this series of work may have to do with its connotation of being a “standard” for everything.

For Ruscha, if something became popular, it eventually became standard.57

While his photographs in Twentysix Gasoline Stations are small and intimate, 7 x 5-1/2 inches, due to the artistic choice and the economic reason, some of his famous Standard

Station paintings are monumental in scale, such as the 65 x 121 inches Standard Station with Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half, 1964.58 [3-10] Ruscha tied this painting to the context of a Western story and its history, in which a paperback book with the title

Popular Western is floating surrealistically in the blue sky above the building and its sign.

On one hand, the book is torn in half, as a way for Ruscha to complicate the space of the painting with a trompe l’oeil effect. On the other hand, it might also suggest that the Old

West is being replaced with a new one, as Ruscha has described gas stations as “small

56 Rowell, Ed Ruscha Photographer, 18. See original quote from an interview between Sylvia Wolf and Ed Ruscha. Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography, 264.

57 Auping, Ed Ruscha: Road Tested, 20.

58 Auping, “Street Talk with Ed Ruscha” in Ed Ruscha: Road Tested, 50. Ruscha stated that he was not sure if he could afford a bigger book because he was paying to publish the book at the time. 184

western towns,” with one or two resident employees.59

The theme of travel and landscape, as evidenced in the gas station, recalls the visual history of the West and subjects in American art. Aside from Evans’s and Frank’s photographs of the gas station, Edward Hopper’s famous painting Gas, 1940 is another obvious precedent. [1-21] By depicting the viewpoint of a driver pulling into a quiet gas station with a lone attendant with nothing to do, absorbed in his thoughts, Edward Hopper suggested the psychology of a moment, the sense of isolation and loneliness experienced by both the driver and the attendant.60 While Edward Hopper’s picture is about people and their emotional, existential condition, Ruscha’s gas station photographs are absent of people entirely, having only the presence of human byproducts, cars and gas stations.61

Ruscha was even more fascinated by the loneliness and isolation of gas stations on the open road.62 In 1963, Ruscha hitchhiked across the country to New York with Joe

Goode, and shared his Twentysix Gasoline Stations with Andy Warhol, who exclaimed:

59 Auping, “A Long Drive” in Ed Ruscha: Road Tested, 20.

60 Ibid., 14. See also Silk, Automobile and Culture, 108. By placing the spectator’s perspective inside looking out of a car, Hopper recreated a sense of isolation and rootlessness.

61 Auping, “A Long Drive” in Ed Ruscha: Road Tested, 14.

62 Auping, “Street Talk with Ed Ruscha” in Ed Ruscha: Road Tested, 48. 185

“Ooh, I love that there are no people in them.”63 Unlike the painting by Hopper or photographs by Evans and Frank, Ruscha’s gas station photographs are not romantic, nostalgic, or bleak. Rather, his pictures are functional and factual.64 Although the subject remains the same, Ruscha’s gas station photographs render a different visual and emotional quality than the ones by his predecessors.

Visualizing the Drive: View through the Windshield

When the song Get your Kicks on Route 66 was first released in 1946, Ruscha was nine. The song included the lyric, “Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty.” It was one of the major stops on this highway connecting Chicago and Los Angeles. Ruscha headed to live in Los Angeles after graduating from high school; he eventually became one of the most representative artists of the city. Ruscha’s road trip on Route 66 was not an isolated matter in the art world or in visual culture of the 1960s. Inspired by Kerouac’s On the

Road, the famous TV series on CBS, Route 66, which ran 116 episodes for four seasons between 1960 and 1964, was a popular culture icon of the period. It followed the exploits of two young men traveling the United States in a Chevrolet Corvette convertible and

63 Terry, “Ruscha’s West: A Selected Chronology,” in Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, ed. Karin Breuer, 196.

64 Auping, “A Long Drive” in Ed Ruscha: Road Tested, 17. 186

their journey on the US 66.

Depictions of the driving experience also can be found in works by other contemporary artists based in Los Angeles. Such representations demonstrate the profane and profound impact on the visual and spatial experiences perceived by artists when they reside in or relocate to Los Angeles.

In 1962, after receiving her B.F.A. from Indiana University, Latvian-American painter Vija Celmins moved to Los Angeles to pursue an M.F.A. at the University of

California at Los Angeles. While still a graduate student, she announced her determination to create what she called “deadpan paintings.”65 Celmins was enamored by the constantly changing built environment of the city and the driving and the automobile landscapes in Los Angeles; she depicted a different scene from the freeway as opposed to Ruscha’s old-fashioned state highway. In her Freeway, 1966, Celmins looked out through the windshield, documented the view and the moment, and thus re-created the spatial experience of a driver on the freeway.66 [3-11] Freeway is based on a

65 Bill Berkson, “Spellbound,” in Vija Celmins (New York: McKee Gallery, 2001), unpaginated.

66 The theme of viewing the road through the windshield can be found in the writings of Sir Hubert von Herkomer back to the early years of automobile history and Henri Matisse’s Through the Windshield, 1917, as well as works by Stuart Davis and later by Alan D’Arcangelo, whose work depicts such theme in the 1960s. See Silk, Automobile and Culture. For a comparative study of the view through the windshield between photography and realist painting, a more compelling comparison also can be found in several of Russell Lee’s photographs taken on the highway in Bexar County, Texas and Edward Hopper’s Jo in 187

photograph of the recently completed 405 freeway taken during her trips between Venice,

Los Angeles, where she lived, and the University of Irvine, where she taught. The painting depicts the view looking south onto the San Diego Freeway.67

Similar to the drive, the nature of Celmins’s work required isolation and intense concentration.68 In her work, space must be apprehended and measured with the body as well as the mind.69 During the long drive from Venice to Irvine, Celmins became intrigued by the views of the freeway that appeared across the windshield. She set up a small camera on her side and began to take photographs along her regular route. Freeway is the earliest of her paintings done from her own photographs. The painting is seen in a warm to cool modulated range of grays, yet vividly suggestive of the dissolving perspectives and wide peripheral spaces of highway driving.70

Celmins’s work is objective and subjective at the same time: an idea and

Wyoming, 1946. See Russell Lee, Untitled Photograph, possible related to Highway in Bexar County, Texas from an Automobile, March, 1940, LC-USF-012640-M3, FSA Collection, Library of Congress. Lee photographed his wife Doris driving from the back seat of the car, while framing the highway through the windshield. Hopper also presented a view from the back seat of the car as he painted his wife Jo painting the Western landscape juxtaposed with the highway.

67 Whiting, Pop L.A: Art and the City in the 1960s, 87.

68 Betty Turnbull, “Foreword,” in Vija Celmins: A Survey Exhibition (Los Angeles: Fellows of Contemporary Art, 1979), 13.

69 Susan C. Larson, “Vija Celmins,” in Vija Celmins: A Survey Exhibition, 19.

70 Ibid., 25. Unlike the shiny surface, crispness, and focal variations of the photograph in a Photorealist painting, Celmin’s primarily exploits the photograph’s ability to fix and hold an entire field of imagery upon a plane. 188

experience in equal part. The painting presents a view through the windshield, yet it also is a product that ties to photographic practice. For Celmins, remembering was a creative act. She explained “You paint what you remember between looking and doing.”71

Celmins’s Freeway encourages not only the act of looking, but also the creative remembering of the driving once experience.

Celmins presented the corporeal existence, an awareness of the containment of the body in the car by positioning herself and the viewer together in the passenger seat next to the driver: both were looking through the windshield with the dashboard and the hood included in the picture. Celmins’s vision was perspectival; it was determined not only by the front seat view and orientation of the road, but also by the stretch of asphalt down the road. The roadside signs and their diminishing scale accentuate the vastness of the space, the open road and sky. While traveling at high speed, our eyes and attention tend to focus on the road, moving from the back of the truck at left foreground, to the line of cars in the middle ground, to the hazily outlined overpass in the distance.72

Unlike Lange and Frank who stepped out of the car and took their photographs

71 Julia Friedrich, “Always The Same Song? Vija Celmins’ Visual Research Between Nature and Art, Original and Reproduction,” in Vija Celmins: Desert, Sea & Stars (New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2011), 24.

72 Whiting, Pop L.A: Art and the City in the 1960s, 87–88. 189

in the middle of the highway, Celmins encapsulated the moment in motion on the freeway.

After many years of progress in highway construction, including the Interstate Highway

System that was authorized and sponsored by the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1956,

Celmins’s highway is much wider than the ones that Lange and Frank had driven along.

With the controlled access, the freeway and interstate highway system also allowed faster speed to solve the issues of growing population and traffic.

Despite that cars and the freeway infrastructure block the vanishing point in the picture, it is clear that we position and imagine ourselves as the driver in the car, occupying a narrow corridor of space that draws us forward and place us always in relation to other vehicles.73 Cécile Whiting further argues that Celmins’s Freeway captures Reyner Banham’s fourth ecology of Los Angeles, autopia, which is described as

“…in its totality…now a single comprehensible place, a coherent state of mind, a complete way of life.”74 Whiting concludes that “Celmins’s painting transforms the urban freeway into a landscape with its own unique space and topography while drawing

73 Ibid., 88.

74 Ibid., 88. Also see original quote, Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (London: Penguin Books, 1971), 213. 190

attention to the experience of viewing through a car’s windshield.”75

Celmins’s Freeway is reminiscent of another Los Angeles Conceptual artist John

Baldessari’s work that was done several years earlier, The Backs of All the Trucks Passed

While Driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, California, Sunday, 20 January, 1963,

1963. [3-12] Baldessari’s envisioning of the backward not only offers a reflection on his own “behindness” in contemporary art, but also his early commitment to backside and bottom-up viewing.76

Unlike the skyscrapers and urban landscape of the metropolises on the East

Coast, California was an oasis at the western edge of the continent, providing a density of different visual information and experiences for artists. Baldessari stated that “California is two separate things…the reality and the state of mind.”77 Ruscha concurred, writing,

“I developed a real closeness to the place. It has to do with the movies, it has to do with

75 Cécile Whiting, Pop L.A: Art and the City in the 1960s, 88.

76 John C. Welchman, “Art Subjects: Physiognomy without a Face,” in John Baldessari: Pure Beauty (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2009), 115, 123n1. Baldessari also made a relevant piece, Truck, 1962, a painting of a flat, starkly symmetrical back of a haulage vehicle made up of metallic hinges and joints and diagonal reflector panels. A few years later, Baldessari created another piece related to the automobile culture, Autotire, 1965, presenting a frame-filling close-up of a zigzag tire. Autotire is large in scale, 64 x 48 in., allowing the visual effect as if the viewer is the driver in a smaller vehicle behind or next to a truck that happens to look at the huge tire while driving.

77 Tuchman, Art in Los Angeles: Seventeen Artists in the Sixties, 26. Also in Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography, 128. 191

palm trees, it has to do with a collage in your mind of what this place is all about.”78

Ruscha also noted that “When I’m driving in certain rural areas out here in the West I start to make my own Panavision. I’m making my own movie as I’m driving. Images start to show up. I get a lot of information out on the road that I use in my studio.”79

Driving exposes Celmins, Baldessari, and Ruscha to the southern California landscape, as they translate in their work its visual information and experiences, as well as its reality and mentality.

That said, cruising had become an interesting subject matter for these Los

Angeles based artists; included among them was Dennis Hopper, an artist, actor, and director, whose major production “Easyrider,” 1969, chronicled the waning of the 1960s spirit. In 1964, Ruscha had a solo exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, in which he showed a group of his Standard Station paintings, many of which depict gas stations along the legendary Route 66. Dennis Hopper bought the painting Standard

Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1963, among others. [3-13] Dennis Hopper’s own photograph

Double Standard, 1961, taken through his car windshield on the corner of Santa Monica

78 Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography, 128. Karlstrom, “Interview with Edward Ruscha in his Western Avenue, Hollywood, Studio,” in Schwartz, Leave Any Information, 129.

79 Auping, “Street Talk with Ed Ruscha” in Ed Ruscha: Road Tested, 52. 192

Boulevard and Melrose Avenue, was used in the exhibition announcement. Since then,

Ruscha’s and Dennis Hopper’s “Standard Station” images often were exhibited and published together.80 [3-1]

Dennis Hopper actually arrived on the artistic and social circle related to Ferus

Gallery in Los Angles prior to Ruscha. Many of their principal subjects and interests—the street scene in Los Angeles, and its vernacular architecture and popular signage—overlap considerably. Ruscha and Dennis Hopper have each explicitly acknowledged the other’s influence on his work. Dennis Hopper noted that Ruscha’s photographs from Every

Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966 [3-14] and Some Los Angeles Apartments, 1967 are important in portraying some sort of aesthetic value in Los Angeles. For Ruscha, Dennis

Hopper’s work is “deliberate and direct…He was addressing popular culture in a head-on manner. His photographs also confronted aspects of both the struggle and glamour of daily life.”81

Dennis Hopper’s Double Standard not only addressed the ordinary life and landscape in Los Angeles, but also its artistic landscape in a symbolic way, as Craig Krull

80 Alexandra Schwartz, Ed Ruscha’s Los Angeles (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 89–90.

81 Ibid., 89–90. For the original quote see, Ed Ruscha, “Man Who Has Five Wives Has Tough Row to Hoe Confucius” in Dennis Hopper: A System of Moments, ed. Kerry Brougher et al. (New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2001), 127. 193

noted:

The title is a double standard when considered in relation to the billboard, “Smart Women Cook with Gas,” but the picture also works on many other levels. It is certainly a Beat Generation photography, taken not only “on the road,” but, as the signs indicate, on the legendary Route 66. It is also a quintessentially “L.A.” image made from a driver’s perspective, complete with a traffic cop and traffic in the rear view. The driver/photographer is also leading us through a pivotal intersection of time and place. Just down the street on La Cienega Boulevard [was] the now-legendary Ferus Gallery…while nearby [was] Huysman Gallery…. Around the corner was Barney’s Beanery, the art world’s notorious hangout. Not only was it the beginning of the sixties, but it was a seminal period in L.A.’s art history.82

The composition and vision of looking out through the car windshield that Celmins and

Baldessari used may not only have been rooted in their perceptions of ordinary life and landscape, but also indebted to Dennis Hopper’s iconic image of wandering in Los

Angeles by car few years earlier. The driving experience and its visual perception become both personal and collective for these Los Angeles artists.

From Every Building on the Sunset Strip to Royal Road Test

After Kerouac published On the Road in 1957, Ruscha read a copy the next year.

Ruscha stated: “I felt an affinity to On the Road…that these renegade ruffians would start

82 Craig Krull, Photographing the L.A. Art Scene, 1955–1975 (Santa Monica, CA: Smart Art Press, 1996), 11. The station was located at the corner of Doheny Drive, Santa Monica Boulevard, and Melrose Avenue. 194

traveling on the highways and sort of wing it with this very noble idealism. So the notion of being out on the highways and experiencing America through that mode and then reflecting on it and sort of dancing with it held great appeal to me.”83 For Ruscha, the characters in On the Road taught him to look at America in a raw and unfiltered way.

With this inspiration, Ruscha produced his photographic series that was published as

Twentysix Gasoline Stations. Next, he switched his focus to mapping Los Angeles by photographing its aspects from the roadways because the city had emerged as the face of the new American West. With an expansive freeway system constructed to connect the growing urban sprawl with the city’s central downtown area, Los Angeles had become a city of cars and car culture. The city was built around and for the automobile, and the association of the city with car travel remained quintessential in Ruscha’s work.84

83 Breuer, Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, 16. For the original quote from the interview, Bob Monk, “Ed Ruscha: The Golden State,” Art in America 99, no. 9 (October 2011): 158. Ruscha recently had an exhibition and a book based on Kerouac’s novel On the Road. Ed Ruscha, Ed Ruscha: On the Road: An Artist Book of the Classic Novel of Jack Kerouac (Göttingen: Steidl, 2009) For the “Ed Ruscha: The Golden State” interview, accessed August, 14, 2016, http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/magazine/ed-ruscha-the-golden-state/

84 Breuer, Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, 16. Los Angeles was the largest urban center on the West Coast. Construction booming to accommodate the growing population in urban and suburban communities—including the city’s west side, San Fernando Valley to the north, and the major harbor and beach areas to the south. The population of Los Angeles County grew from 3,365,000 in 1945 to 6,664,000 in 1965, according to U.S. Bureau of the Census. California grew from 6.9 million in 1940 to 15.7 million in 1962 and became the most populous state passing New York. Michael Dear, “Peopling California,” in Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900–2000, ed. Stephanie Barron, Sheri Bernstein, and Ilene Susan Fort (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 58. Also mentioned in Whiting, Pop L.A: Art and the City in the 1960s, 223, fn 29. 195

Although Ruscha had mentioned and demonstrated his fascination with long-distance drives as he drove across five states for his Twentysix Gasoline Stations, suggesting more of a cross-country affair, through the 1960s and 1970s, he frequently drove locally in the Greater Los Angeles area with a notebook and camera.85 Many of

Ruscha’s photographic books inventory the urban landscape of Los Angeles, each with a leitmotif: gas stations, apartment buildings, parking lots, and the Sunset Strip.86 By combining cruising with classifying, Ruscha broke down his city into constituent visual parts. He developed a new hybrid form, which was neither architectural photography nor straight, street photography.87 Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966 is literally the documentation of Ruscha in a pickup truck with a motorized Nikon, documenting a two-mile stretch of Sunset Boulevard. In a way, the series also presages and resembles

Google street views today. [3-14]

Sunset Boulevard runs approximately 22 miles from downtown Los Angeles through Beverly Hills to the Pacific Ocean. This is not only one of the arteries that

85 Auping, “A Long Drive” in Ed Ruscha: Road Tested, 24.

86 Whiting, Pop L.A: Art and the City in the 1960s, 92.

87 Ibid. 196

crosses Los Angeles but also is considered an icon of Los Angeles culture and celebrity.88

While Twentysix Gasoline Stations revealed and presaged Ruscha’s interest in the city of

Los Angeles and its landscape, environs, its streets, and omnipresent cars as an indispensable means of transport, his most striking book about the city is Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966. This volume is devoted to the entertainment section of Sunset

Boulevard between West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Like the stretch of the strip, this photographic series is 299 1/2 inch long when all the pages completely folded out.89

[3-15]

At first, Ruscha attempted to photograph the Strip on foot, but the parked cars blocked most of his view for framing the storefronts. Ruscha then settled on using a motorized 35 mm camera; he stocked his pick-up with many rolls of film. After the film was developed, Danna Knego, Ruscha’s girlfriend who became his wife a year later, noted down all the addresses on each contact print. Ruscha carefully planned for the project, even thinking about the direction of the sunlight in advance. Photographed at high noon, the buildings appear flat. Ruscha explained, “It’s like a Western town in a way.

88 Ibid., 26.

89 Christian Müller, Ed Ruscha: Los Angeles Apartments (Göttingen: Steidl, 2013), 40–42. 197

A storefront plane of a Western town is just paper, everything behind it is just nothing.”

Once again, the idea of the American West as a frontier, even set against the reality of contemporary culture, was the driving force for Ruscha. He considered this series like a movie in still images.90

In the summer 1967 issue of Artforum, Every Building on the Sunset Strip was one of the works chosen by artist Sol LeWitt to illustrate his essay, “Paragraphs on

Conceptual Art.” Based on his own practice, LeWitt offers observation and explains the definition of Conceptual art, art driven by ideas before form.

In Conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman.91

As an artist of Pop art and proto-Conceptual art, Ruscha’s work occupies a unique and

90 Ruscha shot a continuous strip of black-and-white motion picture film, which accommodated roughly 250 frames. Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography, 139–140. In the documents and materials Ruscha gave to the Getty Museum, he kept clippings of a Los Angeles map and a hand drawn plan of the route with notice of the direction of the sun. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California. For Ruscha’s quote, David Bourdon, “Ruscha as Publisher,” in Leave Any Information as Signal, 43.

91 Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” Artforum, June 1967, 80. LeWitt also used works by photographic works by Dan Graham and Mel Bochner, and sculptures by Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and Robert Morris, as illustrations in his article. 198

complex position while also explicitly and extensively referencing automobile culture and driving experience. In 1967, another theme related to automobile culture is shown in

Ruscha’s series, Thirtyfour Parking Lots. For this project, he hired commercial photographer Art Alanis to take aerial shots of the parking lots in Los Angeles on a

Sunday morning. [3-16]

Ruscha’s engagement with photography seems to reflect a sociological approach to the urban landscape.92 Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962, Some Los Angeles

Apartments, 1965, Every Building on Sunset Strip, 1966, and Thirtyfour Parking Lots,

1967 all were related closely to automobile landscape and touring, and were possible scenes that people might encounter during road trips through the American West and in

Los Angeles. Twentysix Gasoline Stations was driven by an idea and the pictures were made to be banal and objective. In his later series, such as Thirtyfour Parking Lots, in which he even handed the camera to someone else, Ruscha pulled back even further from aesthetics and made cool, distant images that are even flatter in emotional tone than his gasoline stations. He intended to remove personal style from his pictures, yet the styleless

92 Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography, 144. 199

treatment became emblematic of the 1960s and of use of the camera in Conceptualism.93

Ruscha slyly parodied the romantic vision of the road epitomized by writers and artists such as Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank through his book projects, yet his work still contained rigorous purity, deadpan humor, and casual disregard.94 In 1967, Ruscha published another photographic book, Royal Road Test. The book evolved as a performance style documentary project, in which Ruscha and his friends, Mason

Williams and Patrick Blackwell, threw a Royal typewriter out of the window of a speeding 1963 Buick LeSabre on a return trip from Las Vegas.95 [3-17, 18] All the facts related to the event were scrupulously recorded and published in the book:

Date: Sunday, August, 21, 1966 Time: 5:07 pm. Place: US Highway 91 (Interstate Highway 15) traveling South-Southwest, approximately 122 miles Southwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. Weather: Perfect. Speed: 90 m.p.h.

Mason Williams cited the definition of the Dada movement from the Encyclopedia

93 Ibid., 153.

94 "Ed Ruscha: Royal Road Test" (1970.590.5) In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1970.590.5. (October 2006)

95 Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography, 172. 200

Britannica in the preface to the book, alluding to a measure of pseudo-intellectual weight and false seriousness to the project. “It was too directly bound to its own anguish to be anything other than a cry of negation; carrying with itself, the seeds of its own destruction.”96

While the sequence of events—tossing a typewriter out of the car window, then driving back, seeing how it had fallen, and photographing it— was thoroughly spontaneous, the book itself shows more thought and deliberation, evoking a cheaply printed scientific manual but also constituting an art object.97

Royal Road Test was made with a distinctive Dada sensibility, and the pictures of the aftermath in the series are presented as evidence as if the action were a scientific experiment or a crime.98 The book contains captions that provide an inventory of typewriter parts, from “shift balance spring” to “line lock assembly with link.” Ruscha proudly noted in an interview, “It’s like a police report.” He explained the book would seem to be “What a police photographer would produce in a report of how somebody was

96 For the quote in the preface, The Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 6 (Chicago: William Benton, 1963), 991. Also in Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography, 172.

97 Rowell, Ed Ruscha: Photographer, 28.

98 The growing interest in highway safety can crash tests seem relevant as Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965, urging automobile manufacturers for the introduction of safety features and other improvements. Highway fatality also is a theme that can be found in Weegee’s crime scene photographs in the 1940s and Andy Warhol’s car crash series starting from the early 1960s. 201

killed.”99

While his books often are viewed as proto-photo-conceptual, Ruscha always has acknowledged the influence of the work of Marcel Duchamp, especially in relation to his books.100 He has asserted that “I feel the spirit of Duchamp’s work is stronger in my books than in anything else. But I don’t use him as a reference; he’s just so much a part of my history and my art—as he is for so many artists.”101 Among his books, Royal Road

Test is the most instructional and performative. It is also spontaneous like Dadaism. The experimental character is suggested in the title, and the content is clearly the record of a performance. Although throwing the typewriter out of a speeding car window was

Williams’s spontaneous act and only later did they decide to go back to record the wreckage, the book was presented as a totally pre-meditated, performative, instructional piece.102 Evidently, it is at least in part of the inspiration of Duchamp that makes

Ruscha’s work proto-conceptual and so different from his predecessors, Evans and

99 Williams collected the machine parts and took them to a typewriter repair shop for identification. Sylvia Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography, 172, 254n43, 254n44. Original quote of Ruscha’s comments, Douglas M. Davis, “Fro Common Scenes, Mr. Ruscha Evokes Art,” National Observer, July 28, 1969, 17. Also, in Leave Any Information at the Signal, 29.

100 Iversen, Photography after Conceptual Art, 13.

101 Leave Any Information at the Signal, 330.

102 Iversen, Photography after Conceptual Art, 20. 202

Frank.103

Lee Friedlander’s Social Landscapes on the Road

In 1967, the year Ruscha published Royal Road Test, John Szarkowski, the

Director of the Photography Department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, put on an exhibition, New Documents, featuring works by Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and

Garry Winogrand. The exhibition articulated a growing movement that was influenced by

Frank’s impact on documentary photography, embracing a distinctly personal vision.

Ruscha knew the work of Arbus and Friedlander, but he presented a photographic attitude and approach opposite to that of a documentary tradition.104 Ruscha already had several photographic series of the automobile, driving, and Los Angeles or southern California related subjects displaying Pop and Conceptual attitudes and approaches. Friedlander, however, not only had extensively photographed on the road like Frank, showcasing his personal style with sophisticated urban and roadside landscapes, but also had continued the stylistic and iconographic achievements that Frank previously had explored.

103 Duchamp’s infamous and enigmatic work, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, 1915–1923, also known as The Large Glass, contains mechanical imagery suggestive of a sexual encounter. Much of the pseudo-scientific operation of the piece is described or veiled in automotive terms. For example, the bride is a “motor…with quite feeble cylinders, in contact with the sparks of her constant life (desire-magneto)….At her base, is a reservoir of love-gasoline,” which Duchamp called “a sort of automobile.” See Silk, Automobile and Culture, 82.

104 Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography, 153. 203

Friedlander, Arbus, and Winogrand had a strong effect on each other, but their work was very different in concept and intention. In addition to Frank, these photographers had another important influence in common, Evans.105

Evans once had described Friedlander as “an absolute eye.” When Friedlander had to choose a title for his retrospective in 1989, he borrowed from the lyrics of an obscure 1950s rock ‘n’ roll song, and compared himself to “A One-Eyed-Cat.” The choice is obvious that the eye, body, and camera became one to accomplish his voyeur’s work. This rebellious spirit epitomizes the style and aesthetic of Friedlander’s work.106

Friedlander followed the paths of visual exploration pioneered by Evans and

Frank, continuing on from where they had stopped. Friedlander learned from Evans’s careful selection of viewpoint and adjustment of the frame, which could serve metaphorically to address complex issues in the culture at large, beyond the meaning of what was in front of the camera. Like Evans, Friedlander often was aware of using reflections in store windows; language on advertising billboards; and complex compositions of signs, wires, power-line poles, and photographs within photographs to

105 Rod Slemmons, “Lee Friedlander: A Precise Search for the Elusive,” in Like a One-Eyed Cat: Photographs by Lee Friedlander 1956—1987 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989), 112.

106 Gilles Mora, The Last Photographic Heroes: American Photographers of the Sixties and Seventies (New York: Abrams, 2007), 51. 204

build his picture the way other artists composed collages.107

Friedlander recalled seeing books by Eugène Atget and Evans, “Wow, it knocked me down…It was a revelation. Seeing Evans’ and Atget’s work and meeting Evans was a breakthrough for me. From that time on that’s the tradition I worked in.”108 Friedlander also recalled the moment that the Strand Bookstore in New York informed him that a copy of Evans’s American Photographs had been reserved for him; he dropped what he was doing and went to pick it up. Friedlander stated, “I was afraid they’d sell it to someone else.”109 In addition to the revelation from Atget and Evans, Friedlander’s copy of Frank’s The Americans was the French edition that he acquired in 1958, the year before the American version even appeared.110

Another important influential factor affecting Friedlander’s experimentation in the 1960s was an increased awareness of the history of photography. Szarkowski became the director of the Photography Department at the Museum of Modern Art in 1962 and played significant role, often focusing on historic prints as he began to develop his ideas

107 Slemmons, “Lee Friedlander: A Precise Search for the Elusive,” in Like a One-Eyed Cat: Photographs by Lee Friedlander 1956—1987, 113.

108 Time-Life Books, Documentary Photography (New York: Time-Life Books, 1974, 1972), 178.

109 Peter Galassi, Friedlander (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2005), 33.

110 Ibid. 205

concerning the medium. Meanwhile, Beaumont Newhall’s The History of Photography, originally a catalog for an exhibition in 1937, was republished by the museum in 1964.

Friedlander expressed excitement at visiting Evans and seeing a 1930 book of Atget’s images, as well as prints by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Bill Brandt. As Friedlander and his colleagues became more aware of the history of the medium, they also grew more self-conscious about their place within it. The individual artistic directions of Friedlander,

Arbus, and Winogrand were later articulated in Szarkowski’s 1967 exhibition, New

Documents, raising direct questions about the influence of Frank and Evans on these three photographers, especially Friedlander, as well as their roles in the history of photography. In the wall label for the exhibition, Szarkowski explained that these “new documentarians” were not interested in social reform but rather in knowing more about themselves and the visual facts of their surroundings.111

In the Driver’s Seat

Similar to his predecessor Frank, Friedlander received the John Simon

Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1960 and another in 1962. These

111 Slemmons, “Lee Friedlander: A Precise Search for the Elusive,” in Like a One-Eyed Cat: Photographs by Lee Friedlander 1956—1987, 113. As an early user of 35 mm camera, Henri Cartier-Bresson published his famous book The Decisive Moment in 1952, which demonstrated the style of aesthetic he celebrated for. 206

allowed him to travel across America and to concentrate more on his personal work rather than his commercial projects.112 Like Ruscha, who dedicated many of his work to driving and automobile landscapes, Friedlander posed and photographed himself like a protagonist in the road movies, such as in Haverstraw, New York, 1966. [3-19] There are some documents on the dashboard at the far left: one is travel related with word “travel,” and the other is a notification of some sort from the Port of New York Authority with reply mail. On one hand, Friedlander seems expressionless and focused only on what appears in front of him, behind the viewer’s position. On the other, the landscape behind

Friedlander, mainly framed by the rear window, also caught the viewer’s attention. The landscape depicts a suburban residential area and implies the routine of domestic life from which the artist character was probably trying to escape. Both of his hands grip the steering wheel as if he were determined to flee. He looks seemingly calm yet also a bit perturbed, like something is on his mind. In the center right foreground, the shadow of the camera presumably is reflected on the hood.

Interestingly enough, Friedlander is posed as a driver, but the car is not going anywhere. This picture is part of Friedlander’s larger series called Self-Portrait, 1970,

112 Ibid., 111. 207

which shows the notion of Friedlander’s self-representation, here, as a motorist and a loner on the road. Celmins, Baldessari, and Dennis Hopper all presented the view of looking from inside the car out through the windshield, whereas Friedlander offered the opposite perspective looking inwards. While looking out relates to experience as driver,

Friedlander’s version borrows the common shot from road movies: the constructed visual representation of a motorist. In the cinematography of road movies, the driver usually is peering at the road, while also being gazed upon by the audience. In addition to the famous TV series Route 66, running between 1960 and 1964, there were two other important road movies produced around this time: Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, 1962; and Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, 1967. The former visualizes the road journey described in Nabokov’s book, and the latter depicts the rebellions and perils of an outlaw gang robbing banks during the Depression with an implication of the spirit of the Counter Culture in the 1960s. Both movies contained numerous shots of looking inside the windshield at the characters, portraying their facial expressions while they were driving.113

113 In addition to the classical frontal shot from an outside view through the windshield that focuses on the driving, road movies often provide shots from the side, especially during the conversation between the driver and the passenger, which allows the viewer to identify with the roles. While the characters occupy the foreground in the profile shot, the viewer often sees the roadside landscape fleeting in the background, suggesting that the conversation takes place in the car or while driving. 208

Big and Little Screens on the Road

The expression on a mediated face that one might see while being on the road is a recurrent theme in Friedlander’s work. Subjects like the drive-in theater and the TV set, among others, are noticeably reminiscent of the ones in Frank’s The Americans. [2-15, 16]

Watching the big and little screens may correspond to the looking through the windshield while in the car; both are palpable visual and body experiences of gazing at a framed pictorial space. As these faces are framed in the magic box, Friedlander is trapped in another one, his pickup truck. These ways of looking embody the vision of tension and views of modernity in the visual culture of contemporary society. They illustrate

Friedlander’s means of exploring the world. After intensively and extensively watching the road and the screens, such ways of looking strain Friedlander’s vision, yet create a resembling moment and a shared state of mind—tabula rasa. Ironically, rather than depicting real people he encountered at roadside facilities, Friedlander’s pictures of forlorn mediated faces suggest a sense of alienation as if these were the only conversations and human interactions he had or wanted to present.

A recent exhibition and catalogue featured Friedlander’s numerous images related to the late President John F. Kennedy—on the street, in storefronts, and at the 209

drive-in theater—exemplifying collective visual memories of the 1960s.114 In Monsey,

New York, 1963, Friedlander along with other movie goers saw the President’s earlier public appearance footage on the big screen. [3-20] Friedlander’s depiction also allows the viewer to function as if a spectator at the drive-in theater commemorating the

President, seeing his beaming smile face from the position of the audience.115 Although the assassination was not televised, within fifteen minutes of the shooting, half of the population in the United States learned of the event from the news bulletins that interrupted radio and television broadcast throughout the nation, and within the hour, nine out of ten Americans knew that the president had been shot.116 There was clearly a communal wave that the assassination produced.

Judging by the surroundings and the figure sitting next to the President, the footage depicts one of his prior public appearances, not the one in Dallas on November

114 The exhibition “A Great Crowd had Gathered: JFK in the 1960s” was on view at the Yale University Art Gallery from November 1, 2013 to March, 30, 2014 for the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination. The show includes works by Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, and other images from the press. A relevant book solely focused on Friedlander’s work was published. See Lee Friedlander, JFK: Photographic Memoir (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 2013). For information about the exhibition, selected works from the exhibition, and publication, see the gallery website, accessed September 25, 2016, http://artgallery.yale.edu/exhibitions/exhibition/great-crowd-had-gathered-jfk-1960s

115 Accessed September 28, 2016, http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1989.426

116 David Lubin, Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), ix. Lubin also recalls his own memories as a seventh-grader at the time in Columbus, Ohio. 210

22, 1963, the day the President was assassinated.117 Hence, the photograph appears less tragic but still bears the function of a memorial for the President depicting how he had once appeared to the public—young, charismatic, and cheerful. Friedlander’s drive-in photograph, therefore, provides an additional significant dimension from Frank’s in the

1950s because everyone easily can associate President Kennedy with the 1960s, perhaps

1963 in particular, by looking at him in the motorcade. Similar to Frank’s, the picture depicts a glimpse of vernacular American life and visual culture of the drive-in theater; however, Friedlander’s shot further manifests a sense of sorrow and condolence because of its discernible connection to the image of the late president that Americans all felt viscerally then and even now. In Friedlander’s picture, the mundane experience is disrupted by the tragic event.

In February 1963, Harper’s Bazaar published a four-page picture essay by

Friedlander called The Little Screens, with an introduction by Evans.118 [3-21, 22] The piece comprised six black-and-white photographs of televisions illuminating empty

117 Although more research needs to be done to retrace the exact date of this picture, it is presumably after the assassination. See the coverage of Yale’s exhibition by Boston Globe, accessed January 18, 2017, https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/2013/11/21/jfk-and-camera-before-dallas-and-after/JSCf2j7H XWEN3LBwxrH78M/story.html

118 Evans supported both Frank and Friedlander in the early stages of their careers. Friedlander later assessed his mentor, writing: “It seems to me in retrospect that Walker had invented a kind of American photography, and he was brilliant at pursuing it. The whole work knocked me out.” Gilles Mora, The Last Photographic Heroes: American Photographers of the Sixties and Seventies, 39 211

rooms. Although the photographs showed a sparsely furnished bedroom in a presumably modest middle-class American home, they also might be hotel or motel rooms. The images catch the viewer’s attention immediately because of the intensity of the face looking out from the television screen.119

Many Americans began purchasing televisions for their homes.120 As mentioned in the previous chapter, although television existed earlier, it was not until after World

War II that TV succeeded in becoming a mass consumer product, and it was not until the

1950s that it received wide public acceptance. Between 1942 and 1949, only 3.6 million televisions sets were sold in the United States; however, in 1959 alone, that number rose to 68 million units. Television undoubtedly became a popular subject in art and photography.121

The Little Screens was a series about ordinary life and domesticity, but it was also part of the sight/site that a frequent traveler experienced while traveling on the road,

119 Saul Anton, Lee Friedlander: The Little Screens (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2015), 15.

120 Ibid., 16.

121 Ibid., 30. Similar to Friedlander, Andy Warhol was known for his fascination for the television, such as his TV $199 in 1960. In the same year as Friedlander’s Harper’s Bazaar photographic essay, Nam June Paik also held an exhibition, Exposition o Music–Electronic Television at Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany. 212

both visually and spatially. The series is deeply concerned with the act of looking.122

Regardless the different demands of attention, the photo shows the idea of viewing in a confined physical space, like that of a car driver, and forced to watch what was moving in a framed pictorial space, either on the screen or through the windshield. Judging by the surroundings of the television set, interior setting of the room, and the place in the titles, a considerable number of images of the series, in addition to the six images included in the photographic essay in Harper’s Bazaar, were taken in hotels and motels as Friedlander was traveling across the country.

Throughout the 1960s, Friedlander continued to photograph television sets not only as solidified centerpieces of the modern American interior, but, more importantly, as records of his motels stays after a long drive during the day. On one hand, the little television screen provided an alternate view and experience for travelers on the road like

Friedlander. On the other, since television only had limited channels, the experience was presumably “standardized” wherever Friedlander visited. Therefore, the banality of watching limited programs may resonate with part of the tedium of watching and driving on a long, empty highway.

122 Anton, Lee Friedlander: The Little Screens, 50. 213

Identified and named only by the cities in which they were taken, these photographs are the indoor analogues of his lifelong engagement with the American landscape, fundamentally foreshadowing and similar to his later 1976 publication, The

American Monument, and the 2010 exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art,

America by Car. Friedlander often used the car windshield or shop window on the street to provide another pictorial space and world in his photographs. The televisions set offered another framing device that was idiosyncratic and essential to his visual explorations.123

The Roadside and the Artist’s Self-Reference

Influenced by Evans, Friedlander also was interested in depicting a roadside like that Ruscha recorded in his stops at gas stations in Twentysix Gasoline Stations. Lone

Star Café, Texas, 1965, shows a scene that Friedlander photographed while standing at an intersection or a driveway of a plaza. [3-23] Ruscha was unconcerned with his careless

“mistake” of including his long shadow at the far left in the foreground in Beeline,

Holbrook, Arizona from Twentysix Gasoline Stations; Friedlander consistently embraced this visual effect to create his idiosyncratic style and suggest the artist’s presence at the

123 Ibid, 17. Friedlander’s America by Car will be further analyzed in Chapter 5. 214

scene. [3-24] By looking at the shadow of the photographer, the viewer also becomes

Friedlander’s surrogate who can easily associate with the experience of witness.

Friedlander’s representation of self also can be found in Route 9W, New York,

1969, presenting the artist’s face reflected in the side-view mirror while he stopped to look at a religious shrine with a “God Bless America” sign above it from across an empty parking lot along the highway. [3-25] This picture indicates that Friedlander’s seemingly quick snapshot was rather a sophisticated composition that he pre-visualized. Looking through the window from the driver’s seat, Friedlander includes his face while also providing the view behind him on the left, and the shrine occupying the background remained the focal point of the picture. The mechanism of layering pictorial space and the way that the visual components were framed and juxtaposed are clearly reminiscent of

Evans, particularly Highway Corner, Reedsville West Virginia, June 1935. [1-10] Yet in

Friedlander’s example, the inclusion of his face not only highlighted the effect that the viewer sees at what the artist saw at the moment, but also provided an invitation through the first person point of view. In that case, the viewer easily identified with the viewpoint as if sitting in the driver’s seat when Friedlander took the shot. The spectator then assumed the role of the artist in the picture while looking at the photograph. 215

Tourist’s Gaze / Mount Rushmore

The tourist gaze is another important element in many of Friedlander’s images, from the series The American Monument, 1976. The earliest photographs date from the late 1960s, but many shots were taken between 1971 and 1975 on several road trips visiting 40 states and the District of Columbia. Friedlander made over a thousand prints, and published 213 of them in The American Monument in 1976, the bicentennial anniversary of the American independence.124

In Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, 1969, Friedlander purposely used the reflection of the window to capture the faces of the four presidents carved on Mount

Rushmore. [3-26] He also included a couple of older sightseers, one looking through her binoculars and the other taking snapshots of the monument. This allowed the viewer not only to witness this particular moment and scene with Friedlander, but also to become like the couple and share their viewpoints of looking through optical devices just as

Friedlander did with his camera lens.

Friedlander rendered his version of the “decisive moment” by capturing two senior sightseers holding the camera and the binoculars at the same time. He also

124 Campany, The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip, 116. 216

strategically framed the monuments within the panels of the window. More importantly, the picture demonstrated Friedlander’s sophisticated consideration of the relationship between a spectacle and its audience. He turned away from Mount Rushmore to photograph an ironic scene instead. On the one hand, other tourists standing inside the visitor center appear disinterested in the monument. On the other, in the foreground, the two senior sightseers actively looked at the monument through the optical devices of binoculars and camera’s viewfinder.125

Friedlander was well-known for utilizing mirrors and windows, as well as their reflections, to provide information about the surroundings of the subjects and the artist himself. His delight in constructing photographic space is evident throughout the body of his work. In New Orleans, 1968, Friedlander shot a storefront on a street, obviously exploiting the visual effect of the window and its reflection. [3-27] The reflective surfaces of the window and the mirror beyond the window are difficult to reconcile with the surface of the photograph. The photographer and a bystander—perhaps representative of a viewer—are reflected back and forth by the surfaces and hard to place within the illusory space of the photograph. The picture demonstrates that seeing is not an act that

125 See the description of the work on the website of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/84231.html?mulR=975196024%7C3 217

can be simply described, especially with a camera.126 This approach set the tone for

Friedlander’s artistic intention and the aesthetic value of his work.

Imperfect Views: Not Your Ordinary Commemoration

Friedlander’s book The American Monument, 1976 carried on the project that originated during the Depression, between 1934 and 1943, when FSA photographers documented living conditions reflecting the economic crisis in rural and urban America.

He was inspired by the memorials and monuments documented in Evans’s American

Photographs, which arguably began during Evans’s FSA years of archiving the diverse commemorative monuments scattered throughout American towns, a photographic tradition that can be traced back to Atget’s work.127 Nevertheless, unlike Evans and more like Frank, Friedlander expressed his irreverent and skeptical view of American culture in

The American Monument.

On the one hand, Friedlander’s representations imply the political atmosphere of the 1960s into the mid-1970s, when distrust about the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal was pervasive. On the other, Friedlander exploited visual explorations by

126 Slemmons, “Lee Friedlander: A Precise Search for the Elusive,” in Like a One-Eyed Cat: Photographs by Lee Friedlander 1956—1987, 117.

127 Mora, The Last Photographic Heroes: American Photographers of the Sixties and Seventies, 136–7. 218

including many monuments to discovery, death, and destruction in a deadpan and even ironic fashion, offering an unconventional, even abnormal, commemoration of the

American past and an obstructive interpretation of the ordinary present landscape.128

Friedlander not only offered The American Monument as a contribution to the

American bicentennial, but also chose to produce it in a large, 12 by 16 inches format derived from nineteenth-century photography album, very different from Ruscha’s many smaller photographic books. More importantly, the book introduced a level of interactivity unprecedented in the medium. The prints can be removed from the binding, allowing the reader to reconfigure the order of the book or even hang a photo on the wall.129

Friedlander’s series sometimes rendered several key features all at once, including self-portrait, the monument, and the roadside, as evidenced in New Orleans,

1969. [3-28] He again used the visual mechanism of including a self-portrait reflected in the side-view mirror that provided some landscape in the background and used the large empty sky to block part of the view in front of him on the left. Nonetheless, in addition to

128 Slemmons, “Lee Friedlander: A Precise Search for the Elusive,” in Like a One-Eyed Cat: Photographs by Lee Friedlander 1956—1987, 117.

129 Mora, The Last Photographic Heroes: American Photographers of the Sixties and Seventies, 136–7. 219

the mirror with his self-portrait in the foreground, he carefully arranged his subject: the statue in the distance standing in a small civic park.

Since many memorials and monuments are located on main streets, in town squares, in memorial parks, or at major intersections or significant locations, Friedlander often wandered around these places as had Evans. Unlike his predecessor, however,

Friedlander documented these monuments in a different way. As described in Leslie

Katz’s afterword of Friedlander’s The American Monuments, each monument was supposed to be a meditation on civil history, a reaffirmation of the ultimate provincialism of time, place, and personality.130 Each picture illustrates particular spatial and historical contexts to which Friedlander alluded, a reflection of American psyche and vernacular landscape. Although the monuments often were a tribute to heroism, in Friedlander’s representations, some were treated bizarrely. They were portrayed as forlorn, covered with snow, surrounded by birds or by homeless or disinterested people and irrelevant objects, or even covered with graffiti. Accident and design cohabit in the visual components in Friedlander’s work, suggesting both spontaneity and plan.131

130 Leslie George Katz, “The American Monument” in The American Monument (New York: The Eakins Press Foundation 1976), unpaginated.

131 Ibid. 220

In Volunteer Fireman, Walden, New York, 1972, for example, Friedlander exploited the analytical, formalist approach that previously had been explored by Evans.

[3-29] His tilted, diagonal composition borrowed from Frank’s snapshot style as well. In this picture, the fireman deliberately is framed in front of the gas station sign that has a torch so as to mimic the gesture of the fireman’s right hand. Moreover, Friedlander photographed the monument from this particular angle, allowing the arrow in the left curve sign to direct our vision to the subject while juxtaposing the numbers on the signs indicating Highway 52 and 25 mph speed limit. Like Evans, Friedlander also was aware of the visual effect of the wires of the utility poles that could lead the viewer’s vision. In this case, the left curve sign came first, then the fireman and the sign of the gas station, and finally the wires to the left side of the picture and the storefronts in the background.

Friedlander suggested the sense of encroachment as the sign drowns out the appearance of the statue—undermining its meaning. The statue of the fireman stands still while appears off balance.

From Frank to Friedlander

In addition to Evans, Friedlander was undoubtedly indebted to Frank’s style in photographs in The Americans. Friedlander’s self-portrait reflected on the mirrors and 221

windows may seem to have been borrowed the visual language from one of Frank’s implicit photographs, Barber Shop through Screen Door—McClellanville, South Carolina,

1955. [3-30] Frank visited the vicinity based on Evans’s suggestion.132 Frank took the shot while exploring the empty barber shop. The picture obscurely shows the reflection of

Frank’s contour and the landscape behind him. Frank had to be very close to the screen door to use his own body to avoid the reflection; but at the same time, the part that his body did not cover provided reflected information of his surroundings. The reflection and self-reference in Frank’s picture, therefore, presaged Friedlander’s similar visual explorations in streets and on the road in the 1960s and later.

Both Frank and Friedlander infer a personal view and self-reference in their photography. Friedlander went further in developing this concept, creating his own visual language often in a witty way. Unlike Frank’s poetic view of the town from an elevated perch at the hotel in View from Hotel Window, Butte, Montana, 1956, [2-5] Friedlander presented a deadpan, banal scene of the town in Butte, Montana, 1970, most likely chosen because of the street sign with a name resembling his own. [3-31] Friedlander added humor via this self-reference in a vernacular landscape, as if someone would make

132 Sarah Greenough, Looking In Robert Frank’s The Americans, 367. 222

a mark or record while visiting a place. In this case, the message was clear: “Lee

(Friedlander, ‘man of the road’) was here.”

Similarly, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1972, another deadpan street view of an intersection, Friedlander captured the moment when a black dog seemingly waits to cross the street. [3-32] The scene is banal, and no person appears in the frame. The image also discloses the interchange between chance and control in Friedlander’s photography.

Friedlander’s encounter with this scene was by chance. He could not have staged the dog

(we assume), and only had few seconds to make the shot. Similar to his colleague,

Winogrand, Friedlander often worked without a specific project in mind, simply taking pictures of what he saw to determine what it might look like when photographed.133 Yet, he planted himself in a position so that most of the poles and the fireplug appeared as straight as possible, not tilted due to rules of perspective. If he had moved a few steps to the left or right, things might not have been positioned as squarely as they appeared, losing their compositional balance. He consciously focused on the void in the center, while also including the fireplug in the foreground and the house across the street in the background to allow the viewer to wander visually in his picture within multiple layers of

133 Richard Benson, “Afterword” in Lee Friedlander in the Picture: Self-Portraits 1958–2011 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 2011), un-paginated. 223

space. The lampposts and lights extend into space, dissecting the image into pieces and parts. The lines in concert with the crosswalk and the road also converged at the fireplug on the sidewalk in the foreground. Friedlander smartly positioned part of the light-toned car with a black tire on the right and a black dog on the left to symmetrically provide two visual weights on either side of the picture. Drawn from the vernacular landscape and seemingly a random slice of life, his work was planned meticulously. Friedlander photographed subjects that may appear to lack visual interest, transforming them into subtle formalist compositions.134

In this particular picture, the black dog was blocked partially by the lamppost; and the car on the right also was cropped out of the frame. Miles Orvell argued that

Friedlander may have been the first photographer to record the obstructions of vision in public space. This photographic approach and aesthetic also applied to many of his images in The American Monument. He was not satisfied with providing the conventional unobstructed view. He accepted and embraced fragmented visual elements into his picture frame—such as his own shadow, the messy surroundings, trees, bushes, signs, and other objects blocking the his view of the monuments—as part of his language and

134 Orvell, American Photography, 126. 224

pictorial vocabulary. This blocked view also became the new and actual view of the afterlife of the monument. Orvell concluded that this demonstrates an exact pre-visualization of what the picture would look like during Friedlander’s framing process. Friedlander’s work represented the chaos of the contemporary vernacular landscape.135

Friedlander’s obstructed and distractive views not only demonstrated his identity as an alienated individual but also disclosed the issue of self and/as other. Daniel Morris argues how Friedlander’s work relates to the conception of the artist’s Jewishness. Morris claimed that Friedlander may be “non-Jewish Jew” because Friedlander was not particularly interested in depicting Jewish people or subjects.136

Morris argued that Friedlander’s self-portraits, pictures of landscapes and

American monuments were indelibly stained by a history of Jewish exile and displacement. That is, Friedlander’s work illustrate the diasporism, alienation, and hardships faced by European immigrants for whom America provides a not always so

135 Ibid., 127.

136 Daniel Morris, After Weegee: Essays on Contemporary Jewish American Photographers (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011), xxviii. Morris also pointed out that his work benefited significantly from Matthew Baigell’s American Artists, Jewish Images (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006) and Susan Chevlowe’s The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography (New York: Jewish Museum, 2005). 225

comfortable home.137 By employing mirror and windows, for example, Friedlander’s work evoked his presence as a disoriented shadow self by constantly representing himself as mediated through complicated planes and structures. Furthermore, Friedlander constructs multiple personalities by using weird angles and distorting close-ups. He sometimes portrays himself as a stalker or ghost traversing the American landscape. By using himself as a subject, he also comments on the fluidity of his position of being on both sides of the camera. He crossed the boundaries of the genres of self-portrait, documentary, and landscape photography.138

According to Morris, the Jewish notion in Friedlander’s work corroborated that the Jew remains an alienated wanderer for whom change and disorientation are persistent and capricious self, producing unease in an unsettled landscape. This Jewishness may help to explain Friedlander’s frequent displaced perspective of an environment imagined as threatening and upon which the viewer could not find a stable perspective and fixed gaze. It also spoke to the work of his fellow photographers and fellow Jews in New

137 Morris, After Weegee: Essays on Contemporary Jewish American Photographers, xxix, 157–158. Morris further argued that Friedlander’s family history corresponded to the themes of diasporism, displacement, religious and ethnic mixing, and partial assimilation that are characteristics of many Jews of his generation.

138 Ibid., 159. 226

Documents, Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus, and even to the work of Frank as well.139

The visceral and palpable sense of alienation and iconoclasm in the work of Friedlander and his predecessor Frank may well relate to their Jewishness.

Conclusion

The work of Ruscha and Friedlander differs drastically in terms of intention, style, and approach, but there are some shared common contexts and issues in their art.

For Ruscha, photography is only a playground, and he does not consider himself a photographer. On the contrary, Friedlander asserts: “As a photographer, what interests me first of all is photography itself and taking pictures.”140 Friedlander also states “I always wanted to be a photographer. I was fascinated with the materials. But I never dreamed I would be having this much fun. I imagined something much less elusive, much more mundane.”141 After all, Friedlander’s work is actually elusive; and although its content and look may be mundane, the work itself is not. It is the chaos in Friedlander’s pictures that renders significance.

139 Ibid., 158, 160–161.

140 Loïc Malle, “Detachment” in Lee Friedlander (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), un-paginated.

141 Slemmons, “Lee Friedlander: A Precise Search for the Elusive,” in Like a One-Eyed Cat: Photographs by Lee Friedlander 1956—1987, 111. 227

Although Ruscha was strongly familiar with the tradition of photographing on the road by Evans and Frank, he was not interested in engaging with the medium. Rather he utilized photographs only for documentary purposes, a tool for recording his artistic and conceptualist projects. Conversely, Friedlander benefited while departing from the style and content that Evans and Frank had explored in the history of medium and the tradition of picturing America during a road trip.

Growing up in Oklahoma, Ruscha had a particular connection to the visual representation and cultural heritage of the Okies and the American West. He reconfigured the American road narrative that had already been explored by Evans, Lange, Ford, and

Frank, to fit within the appearances and approaches that closely associated his work with

Pop and Conceptual art. Ruscha’s pieces also share the visual and spatial experiences that often are projected in works by contemporary fellow artists based in Los Angeles, including Dennis Hopper, Vija Celmins, and John Baldessari. His art represents the style and spirit of West Coast Pop art, particularly in Los Angeles.

Ruscha was a significant figure in the 1960s because of his conceptualization of the aesthetic of the car-oriented landscape in the photographic image. Inspired by

Kerouac’s On the Road and the early 1960s TV series Route 66, driving as a theme 228

became central in American popular culture.142 Ruscha’s relatively small (in length and size) photographic books and seemingly casually taken and ordinary images foreshadowed and corroborated a larger picture of representing and reflecting on the landscape, especially the urban sprawl closely related to automobile culture.143 This kind of spatial experience and perception through driving was examined in the 1972 publication, Learning from Las Vegas, written by architects Robert Venturi, Denis Scott

Brown, and Steven Izenour. Ruscha’s views of the strip through driving, as well as his bird’s-eye views of empty parking lots, are discussed in Learning from Las Vegas and in other relevant photographic surveys of Las Vegas.144 Ruscha also presented “mobilized views” from a moving car, a methodology crucial to Learning from Las Vegas.145

Friedlander had a similar notion of the mobilized gaze while on the road,

142 Martino Stierli, Las Vegas in the Rearview Mirror: The City in Theory, Photography, and Film (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2013), 132. A similar concern for the formation and transformation of the urban and suburban landscape also can be found in the photographs by photographers from the seminal exhibition New Topographics: A Man-Altered Landscape in 1975, which will be discussed in the next chapter.

143 Silk, Automobile and Culture, 139. Ruscha’s photo-essays, especially Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles, Some Los Angeles Apartments, and Every Building on the Sunset Strip, reflect on the sameness of these architectural types related to the automobile.

144 Martino Stierli, Las Vegas in the Rearview Mirror: The City in Theory, Photography, and Film (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2013), 132.

145 Ibid., 110, n7. Film historian Anne Friedberg discussed the “ mobilized gaze” in the case of Charles Baudelaire’s “flâneur.” Ruscha’s work also rendered this kind of mobilized gaze through driving either being in the city or on the road. 229

expressed through numerous street and roadside views and even through self-portraits and photographs of TV screens in motels. Friedlander’s observation of monuments is

“elegiac and mournful, analytical and mischievous, deadpan but elusive.” His photographs of monuments often suggest irony and cynicism.146 In her Monuments:

America’s History in Art and Memory, Judith Dupré argues that “Monuments are history made visible. They are shrines that celebrate the ideals, achievements, and heroes that existed in one moment in time. They reflect the politics of remembering. The best of them are redemptive, allowing us to understand the past in a way that is meaningful in the present.”147 Friedlander not only identified the country through the bodily experience of extensive road trips, but also invited the viewer to revisit visual representations of the nation’s history, reflecting on their value in contemporary society and everyday life. By showing significant distance and disturbance in his pictures, Friedlander suggests the fluidity and the conflict between different and indifferent commemoration of monuments that supposedly symbolized the nation’s “great” past and its people.

In adapting the lessons of Atget, Evans, and Frank, Friedlander’s urban and

146 Campany, The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip, 116.

147 Judith Dupré, Monuments: America’s History in Art and Memory (New York: Random House, 2007), xii. 230

roadside scenes, as well as views of monuments and memorials, often are filled with architectural fragments and other elements from the disjointed fabric of perception, rejecting lyricism. His work offers a cold, ironic recording of the ordinary landscape, sometimes overloaded with confusing signs and messages.148

Both Ruscha and Friedlander’s work trade in the “deadpan.” Their pictures are as far removed from reporting on their subject as they are from aestheticizing it. As

Ruscha explained in Twentysix Gasoline Stations: “There’s a dryness I went for, actually.

I liked that, having it dry and simple and, in a way, unartistic.”149 The “deskilling” notion also demonstrated the boring and banal snapshot-like quality in his series, which connects to the “exciting implications” that Conceptual art practice offered.150 While Ruscha’s work seems to emulate “amateurism,” Friedlander’s photographs bespeak an attitude of distraction.151 Although the repetition in Ruscha’s series appears to be reminiscent of

148 Mora, The Last Photographic Heroes: American Photographers of the Sixties and Seventies, 51.

149 Rawlinson, “Like Trading Dust for Oranges: Ed Ruscha and Things of Interest,” in Various Small Books: Referencing Various Small Books by Ed Ruscha, 17.

150 Ibid., 14–15. In his critical review on photoconceptualism, Rawlinson reaffirms that Ruscha belongs to the category that Foote called “anti-photographers.” For original quote, see Foote, 24–31. Also see Jennifer Quick, Back to the Drawing Board: Ed Ruscha 1956–1968 (Harvard University, 2015), 13, 126. In general, deskilling is defined as the withdrawal from established conceptions of artistic skill, subjectivity, and manual dexterity. In reframing Ruscha’s work in the dialogue of deskilling and reskilling, Quick further argues that Ruscha’s own comments on his books have reinforced the notion that his photography exemplifies the aesthetic of deskilling central to the theorization of Conceptual art.

151 Malle, “Detachment” in Lee Friedlander, un-paginated. 231

Evans’s work, many of Ruscha’s photographs are certainly poor in quality if judged by

Evans’s standards.

To continue the photographic lineage of Evans and Frank with variations,

Friedlander developed his style by retaking and overtaking the tradition of depicting the street and roadside between the strictness of Evans and the meandering of Frank.152

When Frank showed the melancholic vision of the American landscape, it was personal, tragic, and existentialist, even expressionistic. Friedlander carried on the exploration of the medium, as well as the personal and skeptical view of America. Rather than isolating the subject or choosing only a part of it to provide the beautiful, harmonic view,

Friedlander aimed to present the whole with surroundings and background information, even if the scene was oftentimes filled with considerable distractions and obstructions.

Both Evans and Friedlander used a meticulous formalist approach in their pictures so that everything seemed orderly and in control. One difference between Evans and Friedlander is that Evans’s work is more aestheticized and harmonic and

Friedlander’s pictures mix careful positioning with incongruity. There remains much fragmentation, distraction, and diffraction in Friedlander’s work. Like Evans’s work,

152 Ibid. 232

Friedlander’s also may be reminiscent of a collage, which contains occluded or intertwining pieces and parts. Friedlander belonged to the end of the Beat Generation and the beginning of the Pop art era.153 Nevertheless, his photographic style and approach, as well as the artistic concern, especially the attitude toward Evans and Frank, were different from Ruscha.

While the more obvious influences come from work by earlier photographers,

Friedlander’s collage-like pictures may seem close to Robert Rauschenberg’s combine paintings, of which Friedlander was unaware at the time.154 Friedlander’s seemingly

Dadaist or Neo-Dadaist approach to photography may have resulted from his mentor

Edward Kaminski, whom he met at the Los Angeles Art Center School. In 1956,

Kaminski advised him to pursue his career in New York. Kaminski had studied the work of the Surrealists and Dadaists, who disrupted the conventional modes of representation and interpretation. While Dadaist and Neo-Dadaist de-conventionalize art, Friedlander used a similar approach to photography.155

153 Ibid.

154 Slemmons, “Lee Friedlander: A Precise Search for the Elusive,” in Like a One-Eyed Cat: Photographs by Lee Friedlander 1956—1987, 114.

155 Ibid., 111, 114. Although his work may suggest Dadaist tone, unlike Dadaist artists who sometimes use photo-collages and manipulated imagery, Friedlander still holds the ground of straight and documentary photography. Moreover, while Friedlander’s work may imply Dadaist and Neo-Dadaist affinity, Ruscha’s 233

Since his youth, Friedlander had been affected strongly by jazz and had photographed several jazz musicians for his commercial work. He therefore learned how to anchor his flights of improvisation to a repeated and orchestrated theme.156

Ruscha and Friedlander mined similar but different notions about how to picture their road experiences with implications of self-reference while relating to collective memories. The series Twentysix Gasoline Stations, though seemingly pokerfaced and cool, resulted from Ruscha’s personal experience of traveling westward to California from Oklahoma like many Okies had done during the Depression. Ruscha, however, conducted his photographic trip in the opposite direction, from California east to

Oklahoma, as if this was a rearview of his past and the history of American West.157

Friedlander was conscious of embracing the self-referential in his photographs during a road trip, as he recorded a distraught and frantic America. His pictures of America oftentimes are fractured. The bits and pieces are separated and stirred up, as shown in some of the street scenes—at the gas station, hurrying cars, review mirror, overhead

series seem to respond to another fashion in the movement, Duchamp’s readymade.

156 Ibid.

157 Presaging the 1969 road movie EasyRider starring Dennis Hopper and Peter Honda, in which the characters also departed from Los Angeles and traveled east like Ruscha, both road trips provided a review or reversal of the Westward movement in American history. 234

lights, lampposts, signs, parts of people and landscape.158 As Friedlander’s distracted and obstructed views visually embodied his personal perception of the chaotic world, they metaphorically manifested the collective memory of the unsettled political and social environment in America at the time.

Evans and Frank both paved the way for the work of Ruscha and Friedlander in the 1960s. As depicted in Dennis Hopper’s Double Standard, the road leads in two directions. Ruscha and Friedlander encountered this intersection, and their photographs became the watershed in the development of road photography: one toward Pop and

Conceptual art, and the other to the pictorial explorations of Evans and Frank.159

Although they may have been inspired by the same photographic tradition of being on the road, they visualized and embodied the road experience in different ways in terms of aesthetic and stylistic issues as revealed in their pictures.

Conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth once stated that Conceptualists stress “why,”

158 Time-Life Books, Documentary Photography (New York: Time-Life Books, 1974, 1972), 178.

159 Although both artists were active in the same period of time, they had different agenda of treating photography. As previously mentioned, unlike Friedlander, Ruscha is considered a Pop artist and a Conceptualist, and he is not interested in seriously engaging with photography as a medium, but a tool to document or represent his ideas and practices. Regardless Friedlander’s work may resonate with Pop art and neo-Dada, he has more seriously adhered to the tradition and medium of photography. 235

while other artists continue to focus on “how.”160 Kosuth’s comment perhaps sheds light on reinterpreting both Ruscha’s and Friedlander’s work. For Ruscha, “why” dominates

“how;” and his intention led to the way he presented his work. Its seemingly casual and banal appearances illustrate Ruscha’s aesthetic of deskilling and amateurism—an important feature for Conceptual art. For Friedlander, “how” is more crucial than “why;” but the way he represented what he encountered on the road also led to the reason of why

Friedlander showed the views in this way. In Friedlander’s work, the question relates to the development of this particular photographic paradigm in terms of style and content, as well as his personal vision, and the larger picture of the social context and political atmosphere of America at the time. For both Ruscha and Friedlander, the issues of “why” and “how” are reciprocal. Consequently, their work shows the simultaneity and variety of artistic intentions, styles, and approaches in art and photography, as well as the visual culture of America in the 1960s.

160 In the Artist’s Voice: Joseph Kosuth, a lecture held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, October 7, 2016. The occasion for Kosuth to give this public conversation was to conclude an exhibition he had installed in the room next to the famous gallery that features Marcel Duchamp’s work. Therefore, when Kosuth recollected the 1960s, he often credited the impact of Duchamp on many young artists at the time, especially those Conceptualists. Kosuth and Ruscha both were influenced significantly by Duchamp. 236

CHAPTER 4

SEARCH FOR THE (UN)COMMON AMERICA:

STEPHEN SHORE’S AUTO GRAND TOUR1

Ed Ruscha’s gas station photographs sometimes are credited as one of the inspirations for a new photographic style and movement exemplified by the 1975 exhibition, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape.2 Regardless the different intentions between Ruscha and photographers in the New Topographics, their photographs share a similar subject matter and visual quality in depicting forlorn ordinary places in an expressionless and banal way.

As one of the New Topographics photographers, Stephen Shore stated: “I was interested in Ruscha for the same reason I was interested in Warhol. They both made you look at your environment more carefully because they could accept things that didn’t

1 A portion of the framework and analysis in this chapter stem from my earlier work. See Han-Chih Wang, Exploring the American Way: Stephen Shore’s Road Photographs (Thesis, National Central University, 2008).

2 Curator William Jenkins described Ruscha’s work as “stripped of any artistic frills and reduced to an essentially topographic state, conveying substantial amounts of visual information but eschewing entirely the aspects of beauty, emotion, and opinion.” William Jenkins, “Introduction” in New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape (Rochester, NY: International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, 1975), 5. 237

seem important at all, even give them a more elevated status.”3 The same notion of paying considerable attention to the banal and ordinary not only applies to Ruscha’s work, but also to that of Walker Evans and Robert Frank.

Ruscha’s series embodies a fundamental interest of Pop art, bridging the high and low and turning mundane subjects into art. His work may be perplexing, but it occupies a number of hybrid aesthetic positions between straight photography, Pop art, and Conceptual art.4 As Michael Auping explained: “As ubiquitous as the sides of the roads as Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans on supermarket aisles, gas stations were everywhere and invisible at the time. As Warhol had put the spotlight on Campbell’s

Soup, Ruscha did the same for Standard Oil.”5

Shore certainly was familiar with the work of Ruscha, Warhol, and the Pop art movement. Shore began socializing with the Warhol circle when he was only 17 years old.

Between 1965 and 1967, Shore was a regular photographer at Warhol’s studio in

Manhattan, called the Factory, where he took pictures of diverse groups of people and

3 Michael Auping, “A Long Drive” in Ed Ruscha: Road Tested (Fort Worth, TX: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2011), 17.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., 18. 238

Warhol’s daily social and artistic activities.6

By presenting Shore’s work and comparing it with photographs by his contemporaries, such Robert Adams, William Eggleston, and Joel Sternfeld, this chapter reintroduces some major developments that intersect with road photography in the 1970s and 1980s. These include the transformation of the American landscape, as evidenced in the photographs of New Topographics; photographing in color, which was yet to be recognized for its artistic value in fine art photography; and shifting to a large 8-by-10 view camera, rather than snapshots, to provide a more analytical viewing as previously exemplified by Evans but in color.7 Although Adams also was included in the New

Topographics, he was mainly based in Colorado. Eggleston shot in color, yet he lived in the South and only had a regional road trip through the Southwest to California. Similar to Shore, Sternfeld had a cross-country road trip and shot in a large 8-by-10 view camera and in color, but he was more interested in commenting on the meaning and tradition of

6 In 1969, Shore’s photographic work moved closer to Conceptual Art after being influenced by such artists as Christo, Richard Long, Dennis Oppenheim, and Douglas Heubler. See Stephen Shore, Stephen Shore (New York: Aperture, 2014), 306. After seeing Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966, Shore immediately bough all of Ruscha’s books, in which the dullest of documentary pictures were deployed in service of a larger serial idea. See Kevin Moore, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970–1980 (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010), 17.

7 In 1985, Lewis Baltz, one of photographers in the New Topographics, identified color photography and the New Topographics as the two photographic trends of the 1970s. As to color photography, Baltz recognized the work of Eggleston and Shore. See Moore, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970–1980, 10. See original quote, Lewis Baltz, “American Photography in the 1970s” in American Images: Photography 1945–1980 (London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1985), 163. 239

the landscape, rather than depicting conventional highway and roadside themes. Hence,

Shore may be considered a more representative “road photographer” in this period.

After he terminated his regular photographic task at Warhol’s in 1968, Shore had a chance to visit his friends in Amarillo, Texas in 1969. For Shore, Amarillo was exotic as well as familiar. The trip to Texas was the first time Shore had realized how life in other parts of the country was so different than in New York City. He was drawn to the pace of living in the Southwest, the car culture, the barbecue joints, as well as the spatial and visual experience, especially the attraction of light and the chromatic saturation in photographs because of the geography and climate.8 From the late 1960s until the early

1980s, Shore conducted a series of cross-country road trips, which consequently led to two major series, American Surfaces and Uncommon Places.

Although both series were photographed in color, Shore demonstrated a continuation and variation of photographic approach, style, and aesthetic in his work.

American Surfaces exemplifies the snapshot style, previously explored by Frank, while

8 See an interview between Stephen Shore and David Campany, “Ways of Making Pictures,” in Stephen Shore, 29. Before the trip to Amarillo, Texas, Shore had been to Europe frequently, including London, Paris, Madrid, Seville, and Rome. He had seen very little of America, however; he had only been to Los Angeles once. Shore also expressed how Europeans might have different perception and experience of the light on sunny days than Americans. For example, Thomas Struth was accustomed more to the Northern European light than the one in desert country when he and Shore were both commissioned for a photography project in Israel. Also, when Shore showed images he had taken in Winslow, Arizona, an editor in London remarked on the blue skies, a feature usually taken for granted by some Americans. 240

Uncommon Places recalls a formalist tradition and analytical viewing that Evans advocated. The diversity in photographic style and approach was also a result of technical preference—Shore used a different size of camera for each series—a 35 mm camera in

American Surfaces, 1972–1973, and ultimately switching to an 8-by-10 large view camera in Uncommon Places, 1973–1981.9 While the artistic concern was largely consistent, Shore’s photographic approaches and subjects consequently transformed from

American Surfaces to Uncommon Places. The technological, stylistic, and aesthetic differences were reciprocal choices during Shore’s creative process.

Out of the Ordinary: From Amarillo to American Surfaces

In 1971, before beginning American Surface and Uncommon Places, Shore produced a series entitled Greetings from Amarillo, Tall in Texas, a set of 10 postcards for a 5,600 run. The series was inspired by the postcards Shore collected during an earlier trip to Amarillo, Texas. In a way, the series also was reminiscent of the correspondence between Evans’s work and the picture postcards he collected, as well as Ruscha’s

9 There are two editions of Shore’s American Surfaces. Stephen Shore, American Surfaces 1972 (Munich: Schirmer/Mosel; K ln: Die Photographische Samlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, 1999) and a more complete edition American Surfaces (London; New York: Phaidon, 2005). There are several editions of Shore’s Uncommon Places, including Stephen Shore, Uncommon Places: Photographs (Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture; New York: Distributed by Viking Penguin, 1982), Uncommon Places: 50 Unpublished Photographs 1973-1978 (Düsseldorf: Galerie Conrads; Paris: Mennour, 2002), and Uncommon Places: the Complete Works (New York: Aperture, 2004). 241

fascination with the roadside architecture during his road trip.10 Some of Shore’s pictures in Amarillo are notable local landmarks or main streets, such as Potter County

Courthouse and Polk Street. [4-1, 4-2] Shore purposely designed his postcards to be generic without indicating that they are all depictions of Amarillo.

Similar to Evans, Shore translated the visual vocabulary from popular imagery into pictorial language in his work. Compare his Polk Street from Amarillo with the postcards he collected in Michigan in 1973 included in his journal; [4-2, 4-3] these images share an identical composition, suggesting Shore’s interest in representing the vernacular as well as disrupting the hierarchy of fine art and popular visual culture.

As a New Yorker, Shore’s first trip to Amarillo undoubtedly changed his conception and perception about American life and landscape. This experience was similar to the one Ruscha had when he traveled from Oklahoma to Los Angeles. During his earlier road trip with friends in Texas, Shore was not the driver, but was seated in the back seat looking out of the window, framing the world and observing America.11

10 In the same year, Shore also had a show, All the Mean You Can Eat, 1971, including considerable numbers of found imagery, police photographs, pornographic or commercial pictures, and other popular images.

11 See an interview between Stephen Shore and David Campany, “Ways of Making Pictures,” in Stephen Shore, 29. Shore expressed that since he had lived in New York City, it would have been a burden to own and drive a car. For the first trip to Texas, he flew there, and then rode like a tourist sitting in the back seat of his friend’s car. 242

Similar to Frank, in a way, Shore realized that the authentic American experience was not defined solely in New York City. In order to capture and experience this country fully, they both believed in the same solution—an automobile road trip across America. As an immigrant, Frank documented and commented on the nation, while Shore, as a native to New York City, wanted to identify everything he encountered during his trip. For both, a cross-country road trip became an automobile Grand Tour; especially for Shore, it was an opportunity to step out of his “cognitive bubble.”

Hereafter, Shore took several trips with his 35 mm Rollei camera (the forerunner of the point-and-shoot camera), and captured America through the eye of an ordinary tourist. He named this series American Surfaces. Shore stated: “I was interested more in the ordinary, of things not happening in your life. I started photographing everyone I met, every meal, every toilet, every bed I slept in, the streets I walked on, the towns I visited.”12 Perhaps reminiscent of Frank’s The Americans as a road movie in book form,

American Surfaces was Shore’s travelogue and visual diary of a cross-country road trip.

For Warhol, Ruscha, and Shore, photography functioned as a visual

12 Bob Nickas, “Introduction” in American Surfaces (New York: Phaidon, 2005), 9. 243

documentation of the artist’s daily life.13 In a 1967 interview, Warhol stated: “If you want to know about Andy Warhol just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”14 Therefore, Shore’s choice of “surface” for the title seems relevant. In a similar way, it allows us to question whether there is more to the surface, as the viewer aims to retrieve and to define America, Americans, and

American life from Shore’s American Surfaces. Shore’s photographs from American

Surfaces originally were printed and exhibited in postcard size, approximately 3-by-5 inches. The content of the pictures was not postcard perfect like that of the beautiful tourist attractions purveyed at a roadside stand or gift shop.

The subject matter of American Surfaces certainly was indebted to the “on the road” tradition that Evans and Frank previously established in the history of photography.

Shore manifested the snapshot aesthetic and signaled a major shift in art photography by using small prints in color, which Kodak popularly developed. In the early 1970s, the world of fine art photography still was dominated largely by the black-and-white as the mainstream artistic form, as well as by more sophisticatedly composed and delicately

13 Ibid., 10.

14 Ibid., 11. 244

framed photographs. The end product of Shore’s photography was unconventional at the time, yet it served its aesthetic purpose. In the 2005 reissue of American Surfaces, Shore and the publisher thoughtfully designed the book in a package as the original Kodak color finishing envelope with Shore’s name on it.15 [4-4] Unlike many fine art photographers who shot in black-and-white and often processed their films and prints by themselves in order to control the quality, Shore purposely sent hundreds of rolls of film to Kodak. He did this because of the massive amount of images to be developed and printed, as well as for the slightly amateurish quality and loss of control in the final prints. Shore intended to embrace this quality, a gesture reminiscent of Ruscha’s amateurish pictures and mass-produced small photographic books.

Shore’s American Surfaces was significant as a timely reference to define the

American vernacular of the early 1970s in both people and landscape. Although the viewer barely sees the photographer in the picture, Shore’s presence is suggested.16 In

Grand Canyon, Arizona, June, 1972, [4-5] Shore depicted three young men with hippie hair styles and coincidentally all in blue jeans, while the one wearing sunglasses stared at

15 Stephen Shore, American Surfaces (New York: Phaidon, 2005).

16 Nickas, “Introduction” in American Surfaces, 5. 245

Shore’s camera. Judging by Shore’s use of a flash, this picture presumably was taken at dusk. The majestic view of the iconic Grand Canyon in the background was hard to overlook. Shore was one of the tourists sightseeing in this sublime landscape. As a tourist of the tourists, he also enjoyed the view of hippies appreciating and contemplating the wonder of the American West.

Shore admitted that he was inspired by Bobby Troup’s famous song “Get your

Kicks on Route 66,” first released in 1946.17 Shore stated: “Although I grew up in New

York, this song and those names made a powerful impression me. The place names took on an iconic significance and after hearing them for years, I wanted to see those cities.”18

For Shore, everything outside New York City was foreign to him. The farther west he traveled, the more different he found people’s looks, accents, and life styles. While photographing his encounters on the road, Shore also documented and commented on a larger sociological issue in his series—the urban and commercial sprawl in the 1970s.

America was enveloped in a dulling sameness, similar to the kind of standardization

17 Ibid., 7. Shore also mentioned that he traveled via U.S. 66 several times for his cross-country road trip in the southwestern region of the United States of America at a symposium on Robert Frank held in Tate Modern.

18 Stephen Shore, “1947” in A Road Trip Journal, (London: Phaidon, 2008), unpaginated. As discussed earlier, especially in relation to Ruscha, Route 66 played a central role in photographic exploration of the American roadside. Based on his itinerary of visiting numerous cities in the Southwest, Shore inevitably traveled on and off of U.S. 66, and he experienced many of the same things that once had been depicted over the decades by previous American photographers such as Lange, Frank, and Ruscha. 246

suggested in Ruscha’s work. As Daniel Boorstin noted in his The Image: A Guide to

Pseudo-Events in America, in the past, people who lived in a secure, rich, and decent society travel to escape boredom, to elude the familiar, and to discover the exotic. Yet, since the early 1960s, Interstate Highways have been the climax in homogenizing the motorist’s landscape.19 Much of the nation’s distinct characteristic and the sense of place were lost, part of the issues Shore represented in his series.20

Shore photographed the interior of where he stayed or visited in Durango,

Colorado, June, 1973. [4-6] He focused on a painting on the wall, a tableau with a train traveling in the mountains in the upper half, suggesting the image of the old West; it was juxtaposed with the highway and a gigantic roadside sign of the “Holiday Inn” in the lower half. Shore allowed his viewer to contemplate the iconography and meaning of the old West and the new through this anonymous popular imagery in a roadside hotel.

Unlike Frank who carefully arranged the sequence of his The Americans in terms of subject and content, Shore’s American Surfaces mainly was based on chronological order; however, there still were repetitions in the subjects from different

19 Daniel Boortstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), 78, 112.

20 Nickas, “Introduction” in American Surfaces, 8. Shore’s photographs from American Surfaces often are reminiscent of the deadpan quality of Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962 and Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966. 247

times and places in the series. For example, Shore persistently documented the interior of his accommodations, meals, refrigerators, TV sets, and toilets among others. Many of them were subjects and objects of ordinary life and daily routine. The interest in depicting such themes reinforces Shore’s bodily presence as a traveler and photographer.

Seriality, repetition, matter-of-factness, and flatness were all crucial issues in

Pop art, and they can be found in both Warhol’s and Shore’s work.21 As a former regular photographer at Warhol’s “Factory,” it was not surprising to find the connection between

Warhol’s fascination and contemplation of eating and excretion with the ones in Shore’s work.22 [4-7–4-11] Both Shore and Warhol photographed themes of refrigerators and toilets, as reflections of the artist’s eating and digestion, as well as artist’s daily routine activity and its relevant objects.[4-7–4-11] These portrayals confirmed that photography was a vehicle to document an artist’s daily and private life, a common attitude among the

Pop and Conceptual artists. Although these photographs depict private and interior scenes, providing other aspects of a road trip; the toilets and refrigerators in part share the similar

21 See an interview between Stephen Shore and David Campany, “Ways of Making Pictures,” in Stephen Shore, 27. Shore stated that John Coplans’s 1968 exhibition catalogue Serial Imagery was a very influential book for him at the end of the 1960s when he had just left Warhol’s studio. Serial Imagery is a critical survey of the history and representation of serial imagery in Modern and Contemporary art, including works by Claude Monet, Marcel Duchamp, and Andy Warhol, among others. See John Coplans, Serial Imagery (Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Art Museum, 1968)

22 Warhol even produced a film Eat, in which Robert Indiana was the character. 248

notion with the highway in serving the public. While automobiles need to be refueled during the trip, motorists also frequently made stops to meet their bodily needs. Shore’s interest in such themes was no doubted indebted to Warhol, and both of their depictions also bridge and blur the distinction between high (art) and low (life).

Shore further related the presence of the body to sexual activity in Raleigh,

North Carolina, June, 1972, a picture of vending machines selling condoms at the corner.[4-12] One approach to interpreting Shore’s photographic choice of this picture was a reference to the catchy slogan “Make Love not War,” popular during years when

Shore was young. Interestingly, the issue of being safe seems vital for both highway travel and sexual intercourse. Condom machines might not be a common subject in fine art photography, but Shore truthfully represented a common scene during his road trip.

The sense of artist’s body also was revealed in Shore’s Delray Beach, Florida,

March, 1973, demonstrating temporality. [4-13] Shore reached his hand out of the window to snap this picture while waiting for a traffic light. The shadow of Shore’s camera in his hand is visible in the picture. Shore embraced the immediacy and the spontaneity—reinforcing the bodily experience and emphasizing the moment that the artist was driving and taking the picture at the same time. 249

Shore suggested the period of time—Cold War—in another picture taken later in

Florida, Cape Kennedy, Florida, April-May, 1973. [4-14] Shore provided the historical and political context of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The picture was reminiscent of Garry Winogrand’s picture taken a few years earlier at the same vicinity in his Apollo 11 Moon Shot, Cape Kennedy, Florida, 1969.23 [4-15]

Winogrand documented the rocket launch indirectly by focusing on the plaque of the observation deck to indicate the location as he coincidently recorded the lady incongruously photographing in the opposite direction aiming at the artist. He was photographing while being photographed. Unlike Winogrand, Shore chose to document the crucial moment and the sight of the launch, offering a more conventional view as if a real tourist from the distance. In Shore’s picture, everyone is facing in the same direction, demonstrating uniformity and conformity. Although Winogrand and Shore both treated themselves as tourists of the tourists—capturing the vernacular—the sense of place and the touristic gaze suggested in their photographs revealed significant nuance. Winogrand was among the tourists during shooting, but Shore identified himself as a tourist,

23 Winogrand’s photograph shared the similar visual quality as Lee Friedlander’s Mount Rushmore, [3-26] in which the photographer was among the tourists providing the sense of place in an indirect way. Similar to Friedlander, Winogrand constructed multiple directions of vision in his picture. 250

recording a more straightforward image and documenting exactly what a tourist saw.

Shore translated the visual experience that many Americans at that time could relate to as part of the collective memory.

In connection with the common visual experience during the road trip, Shore’s

Rolla, Missouri, July, 1972 [4-16] certainly reflects the theme of the TV set that Frank and Friedlander had previously explored, in photographs such as Frank’s Restaurant, U.S.

1 Leaving Columbia, South Carolina, 1955, [2-15] as well as Friedlander’s Baltimore,

Maryland, 1962 and Galax, Virginia, 1962. [3-21, 3-22] While traveling on the road frequently, these photographers explored and observed America not only through the windshield but also through their “magic box,” most often in lodging rooms. Shore again tried to capture the moment showing highway travelers alone, bored, accompanied only by a little TV in their motel room. During his later road trips, Shore even wrote down the

TV shows he watched every night in the motel in his journal.24 [4-3] The photographs that Shore took about meals, food in the refrigerator, toilets, and TV sets, as well as other things that he encountered, record what he saw while delivering the message of “I was here,” as the picture functions as souvenir and as visual aid for remembering.

24 See Shore, A Road Trip Journal. 251

Shore also recognized the photographic tradition in depicting gas stations. In his

Mineral Wells, Texas, June, 1972, Shore was close to the car, a glimpse that one might have when wandering while the car was refueled. [4-17] Unlike Ruscha’s casual and detached views, Shore incorporated stronger sense of engagement in the scene. He was refueling the car as a motorist, rather than an onlooker or roadside flâneur.25 [3-24]

Shore’s American Surfaces embodies the perceptual and empirical search for

America through the cross-country road trip in the early 1970s. More than the surface,

Shore sought for the truth and reality beneath the picture—the iconographical and sociological aspects of the marriage between photography and the American road trip.

Shore emulated and reaffirmed the photographic tradition that Frank established for traveling across and around America on the road.26

Some of Shore’s themes of the road trip respond to the ones of Evans, Frank, and Ruscha, while other depictions become variations. This suggests Shore’s different intention, style, and approach, as well as the different artistic and historical context. A

25 In this picture, Shore seemed to reformulate what Evans and Frank had done by including his car and looking up at the signage at the gas station. [1-7–1-10; 2-6] Unlike Ruscha, who often kept a distance from the gas station in order to photograph the façade and signage fully, Shore self-referentially indicates his physical and active presence in the function of a service station.

26 Shore mentioned this in his presentation at Tate Modern, London, December 3, 2004, as part of the symposium on Robert Frank. See Tate Modern website, accessed December, 17, 2007. http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/archive/robert_frank/. 252

major difference from the works of his predecessors was Shore’s working in color.

Shore’s choice of 35 mm camera for American Surfaces allowed him to shoot in a more spontaneous way, and to capture even more intimate subjects in ordinary encounters.

Shore was indebted to what Frank had already explored—a more personal commentary of

America during a road trip. Yet, his work did not exhibit Frank’s skepticism and criticism of postwar America on issues of affluence, materialism, alienation, and social inequality.

Shore also was indebted to Warhol’s and Ruscha’s Pop art and then Proto-Conceptualist affinity, manifesting a more amateurish affect. The visual legacies in photography and in the art world converge in Shore’s American Surfaces.27

Above all, Shore provided something essentially new to fine art photography: color. Departing from his earlier black-and-white photographs documenting Warhol’s life at the Factory, Shore began to realize that color was an essential formal quality in photography. For Shore, color was fundamental to celebrating and capturing daily experience, a significant part of the powerful visual effect of in his work. Color connects

27 Shore and Frank also shared one thing common, understanding the sum total of their series was a personal account as much as a public exposé—the fusion of documentary intent and individual subjectivity, public truth and private expression. See Kevin Moore, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970–1980, 18. 253

the image world and the real world.28 For example, the golden color of the fries and the dark steak his Springfield, Illinois, July, 1972 [4-10] not only provides color, but more importantly, the arguable warmth and flavor of the meal that Shore had in front of him.

Warhol’s photographs of bottles and groceries in the refrigerator remain black and white;

[4-8] Shore’s include the colors of the quotidian. In his Amarillo, Texas, July, 1972, [4-7]

Shore offered a palette of green, pink, red, and blue, along with black and white, thus adding color, character, and even life to these ordinary scenes and objects.

With respect to authorship and identity, there was significant similarity and also difference between Frank and Shore. Both set off from New York City where they had received their first impression of nation; they began their road trips across America to seek a fuller picture and understanding of the nation, as everything seemed so different in other parts of the country. Unlike Frank, an alien and immigrant, Shore was a baby boomer, born and raised in New York City. Some of the major differences between the two men were their identity, attitude, and gesture toward contemporary American society.

In American Surfaces, one hardly can find a comment on the controversial or complicated national and international politics, such as the Vietnam War, the massacre at

28 Heinz Liesbrock, “Stephen Shore’s Concept of the Image” in Stephen Shore: Photographs 1973–1993 (London: Schirmer Art Books, 1995), 14. 254

the Olympic Games in Munich, the Watergate scandal, or even the Oil Crisis.29 Rather, the series offered a partial picture of America, in which America still was a prosperous and carefree great nation. The fact that Shore’s work appears to be disinterested in addressing those political issues increases its complexity and makes his representation of

America escapist, utopian, and more one-dimensional thank Frank’s.

Nevertheless, the longing for the road as a wanderer during the Beat Generation when Frank produced The Americans continued in Shore’s time as a younger generation, the Hippie culture, took to the road. For Shore, the cross-country road trip mixed rite of passage and “Grand Tour.”

From Glance to Gaze: Uncommon Places

Borrowing from Norman Bryson’s insightful discussion of the glance and the gaze in Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze, the distinction was instrumental to better understand the difference between Shore’s looking and shooting in American

Surfaces and the later series, Uncommon Places.30 Accordingly, Shore’s images in

29 Shore recalled that nothing much had changed during his road trip in relation to the Oil Crisis or gas shortage problems. Email exchange with the author, October 29, 2010. On the contrary, David Campany recently had compiled a photo-book entitled Gasoline, which included a number of found images depicting gas shortage during the Oil Crisis. David Campany, Gasoline (London: Mack, 2013). Also see the interview on Campany’s website, accessed December, 10, 2016, http://davidcampany.com/gasoline/

30 By the time Shore completed his American Surfaces, he found that there were certain limitations in providing good quality, fine color, and enough detail in his photographs due to the smaller 35 mm camera 255

American Surfaces are more inclined to the notion of glance; his photographs in the later

Uncommon Places elaborated on the notion of gaze. The difference of looking and shooting in the two series is a reciprocal reflection of both technical preference and aesthetic choice. In American Surfaces, Shore incorporated a shorter period of time for viewing, usually allowing more spontaneity and body movement of the subject and the photographer. It is similar to the shooting process that Frank had epitomized. In the later

Uncommon Places, Shore demonstrated less physical interaction but employed a longer period of time of observing and composing, which led to more concentration and contemplation. One of the major transformations of shooting with a smaller 35mm camera and an 8-by-10 camera is that the reflected image in the frame is upside-down in the larger format camera. This was a revival of Evans’s tradition, or of an earlier even tradition, exemplified by the landscape photographers in the 19th century.

By switching to an 8-by-10 camera, Shore’s choice of camera resulted in scenes that were less intuitive, intimate, and spontaneous, and his work became more analytical he used. For his later series, Uncommon Places, Shore switched to a mid-size 4-by-5 camera and later subsequently utilized a large 8-by-10 view camera. On the one hand, Bryson asserted that a glance has the notion of furtive looking or looking while also paying attention to other places or subjects, in which the looking is sometimes concealed. Glance is a way of looking that is more informal or private. It is more intimate and perhaps more desirable. On the other hand, a gaze is a composed view over a longer period of time. It is a more thoughtful way of looking that requires attention and concentration. It sometimes suggests, however, an attitude of indifference. While a glance is related to a subversive and disorderly observation, a gaze is more vigilant and masterful, as well as filled with rationale and spirituality. Norman Bryson, “The Gaze and Glance” in Vision and Painting, the Logic of the Gaze (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 94–95. 256

and a social observation of his subject, shaping his more thoughtful style and aesthetic.31

Shore, therefore, would not photograph as freely as he had in the past, capturing a subject—such as a glimpse of a woman’s underwear as appeared in Amarillo, Texas, Aug.,

1973, [4-18]; or a cat on the bed beside Shore in Canyon, New Mexico, July, 1972, [4-19]; or one of his fellow photographers, William Eggleston, perhaps caught by surprise as he was drunk and driving a car in Memphis, Tennessee, December, 1973.32 [4-20]

In the 2004 edition of Uncommon Places, Shore arranged Room 125, Westbank

Motel, Idaho Falls, Idaho, July 18, 1973 [4-21] as the first photograph in the series.33

The title contains the detailed information about the room, place, and date, similar to the function of a travelogue. More importantly, Shore’s lower body was juxtaposed with the

TV set and his luggage in the picture. Upon a closer look, the landscape outside the motel also was reflected on the TV screen. Everything in this picture serves a purpose to

31 Stephen Shore, Lynne Tillman, “Conversation” in Stephen Shore: Uncommon Places, the Complete Works, 182.

32 Many of Shore’s intuitive and artless shots of his surroundings from American Surfaces are reminiscent of Warhol’s snapshots of his circle of friends. Yet, after Shore switched to a larger size camera, these scenes rarely were seen in later series, Uncommon Places. Despite differences in relation to the style and subject between American Surfaces and Uncommon Places, some themes from the earlier work were retained and further elaborated upon in Uncommon Places.

33 While the 2004 edition of Uncommon Places: The Complete Works included a more complete version of the photographs, with more diverse views, such as portraiture, interiors, and close-up of daily subject, the original 49 photographs in the first 1982 edition showed more emphasis on the American landscape and environment as its central issue. The framing of the landscape plays a significant role in Shore’s original focus of the project. See Shore, “Artist’s Note” in Stephen Shore: Uncommon Places, the Complete Works. 257

provide a preface of the road trip for the viewer. Although the theme was not uncommon in American Surfaces, the use of the larger format camera results in a picture with better quality and more detail for the viewer “to wander” around in the picture. Shore allowed his audience to contemplate more closely, taking the role of the traveler and the photographer at the same time.

Unlike the Rollei 35mm camera that Shore previously had used, he had to set up a tripod for his 8-by-10 view camera for Uncommon Places, because of the size and weight of this equipment. In American Surfaces, Shore still could hold a camera in his hand to snap a picture. The camera usually was an extension of the artist’s body, and the viewfinder or lens was an extension of the artist’s eye; this was evident in Delray Beach,

Florida, March, 1973. [4-13] Nevertheless, in Room 125, Westbank Motel, Idaho Falls

Idaho, July 18, 1973 [4-21], the vision and the view may be more complicated or disconnected. The viewer is looking through the lens but not exactly through Shore’s eyes because of the slightly different viewpoints between the camera lens and the artist’s eyes.

By extending his body from his lower part depicted on the bed, it is clear that Shore presented a view from dual visions. Shore still invited the viewer to participate in the space at the moment. When the viewer looks at the picture through the camera lens, the 258

person actually is placed in the role of a bystander next to Shore on the bed, which was where the tripod stood rather than where Shore sat.

Chronologically, Room 125, Westbank Motel, Idaho Falls, Idaho, July 18, 1973

[4-21] was not the first photograph of the road trip. By arranging it as the first of the series, Shore demonstrated his well-orchestrated mise-en-scene mechanism, suggesting dual identities through dual visions. The picture showcases Shore’s sophisticated thought process that resulted from his composition and contemplation of the picture, which departs from the style and approach practiced in American Surfaces. Although the presentation of a dual vision might have had practical reasons—the weight of an 8-by-10 camera—this “vision” carried aesthetic significance. According to his road journal, Shore just checked in to his room; but without this information, the picture also could be interpreted as a traveler about to embark on the journey for the day.34 Shore persuasively positioned himself as a guide or a storyteller at the beginning of the series through the display of the artist’s body, enhancing an invitational and participatory gesture.

The human presence often was included in depictions of landscape. The façade of buildings and the settings of places are common themes in Shore’s Uncommon Places;

34 See Shore, A Road Trip Journal, upaginated. 259

important locales include parking lots, shopping malls, and other roadside attractions.

Parking lots often are adjacent to roadside facilities related to commercial, leisure, or travel activities. Roadside parking has become one of the indexes to consumer space, suggesting necessary stops for shopping, eating, and resting, essential themes in the ordinary and highway landscape.

In Richland Mall, U.S. 30, Mansfield, Ohio, July 5, 1973, [4-22] Shore photographed the cars in the parking lot to suggest the human presence even though human figures are barely shown in the picture. In another image, Yellowstone National

Park, Wyoming, July 17, 1973, [4-23] autos serve as personifications of tourists facing a serene waterscape. The picture evokes a unique sense of place as if the parking lot became a tourist site and a tourist sight. It offers the first impression for tourists, as they come to visit America’s natural wonders at Yellowstone National Park. These pictures of the parking lot not only suggest Shore’s own presence and stops during his road trip but also paint a larger picture of human intervention in the landscape, as well as people’s relationship to place.35

35 In Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, July 17, 1973, Shore drove the green sedan with plate number 72Z-621. The car is pictured in his other photographs, such as Main Street, Mitchell, South Dakota, July 13, 1973 and Badlands National Monument, South Dakota (Parking Lot, Badlands National Monument, SD), July 14, 1973. See Shore, A Road Trip Journal, 248–249. 260

The commonplace that Shore encountered and photographed constitutes themes that he had begun photographing steadily since Amarillo. Some depictions of locale and place may seem dry enough to share similar visual qualities with a variety of postcards that Martin Parr collected and compiled in his 2004 series Boring Postcards USA.

Compare Shore’s Doug’s Bar B Q No. 1 from Amarillo [4-24] with Parr’s The Famous

Blue Grill on U.S. 40, Elmo, I.L. [4-25] from his Boring Postcards USA. Both pictures have similar views and angles, incorporating significant distance and space in the lower half of the picture. They also both include the signage confirming the information of the place as a roadside restaurant.36

In addition, compare Shore’s later Richland Mall, U.S. 30, Mansfield, Ohio, July

5, 1973 [4-22] from Uncommon Places and Dixie Diner, Hwy. No. 301 and Interstate 95,

Kenly, N.C. [4-26] from Parr’s Boring Postcards USA. Both share similar compositions and the sense of banality of a roadside commercial facility with parking lot.37 In Shore’s picture, the greater size of the mall is exploited by pulling the camera to emphasize the

36 Martin Parr, Boring Postcards USA (London: Phaidon, 2004). Shore’s postcard translates more emptiness than the ones collected by Parr. Perhaps Shore intended to include the service station at the far right into his picture because he could have stepped few steps forward to solely concentrate on the restaurant.

37 Opened in 1969, Richland Mall advertised its capacity to park 5,000 cars, and this Lazarus department store was the first outside of its original base in Columbus, Ohio. See “New Richland Mall Promises Many Firsts in Shopping Convenience” Mansfield News-Journal. October 21, 1969, accessed March 2, 2017, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/38753118/ 261

parking spaces.38 Although the diner’s lot is much smaller, it appears essentially full.

These pictures capture random and common American vernacular views. They are meant to be banal because what they depict was part of ordinary life and landscape.

Whether it was a shopping mall, roadside restaurant, or gas station, each scene was so common that people often take them for granted. That was another amateurish factor that

Shore embraced, showing ordinary themes that people hardly consider worth depicting.

The visual quality not only ties Shore to Ruscha and Warhol, but also refers back to the close relationship between Evans’s work and popular imagery—the picture postcards he collected. Recognizing this lineage, Shore incorporated the ways in which these places are perceived and presented in daily life by placing the subject in the center, as well as imitating the significant distance and space to heighten the tedious quality. By pulling back his camera, Shore emphasized the parking lot in relation to the building, indicating the key role of the car in this milieu. The stylistic appearance and its aesthetic dimension reaffirm Shore’s ironic wordplay with the title of his series—a dialectic question between the common and the uncommon—representing the uncommonness in the commonplaces.

38 Such shopping malls became more widespread in the late 1960s and early 1970s due to the urban sprawl and suburbanization. It also became an unavoidable encounter for Shore as he drove from Pittsburgh to Lima, Ohio via U.S. 30 on that day. According to Shore’s itinerary, he departed from Pittsburgh and stopped by Canton, Ohio for lunch, where he also made two exposures before he took the shot in Mansfield. He subsequently stayed in a Howard Johnson’s motel in Lima, Ohio on July, 5, 1973. See Shore, A Road Trip Journal, unpaginated. 262

In addition to the publication of a series of the postcard Amarillo, Shore made notes about his postcard distribution in his road journal. [4-3] He inserted his postcards into a postcard stand with other commercial ones in many roadside service areas where he stopped. This indicates Shore’s active involvement in clandestinely circulating his picture postcards to the public during his travels. Shore’s action sheds light on the reconsideration of the afterlife of postcards and popular imagery, as well as the role that a photographer plays in the process of image production and dissemination.39

From the Amarillo postcards to the Uncommon Places, the liminality remains persistent and important in Shore’s image making. Postcards usually are made for a more general public audience. They are marketable but often possess with less careful artistic value. Many are meant to encapsulate or promote a sense of place or moment. Shore deliberately embraced and toyed with the quintessential quality of the end product of popular imagery as a way to portray his work as a souvenir of the visual culture—the

39 The elements of chance and intervention in Shore’s distributing postcards also recall qualities in Ruscha’s Conceptualist series The Royal Road Test, 1967. [3-17, 3-18] Shore’s Amarillo postcards were meant to be sold as a Conceptualist project in a bookstore in New York City. After he found out that his postcards were not only overstocked but also hardly marketable, Shore then carried some of them on the road and distributed them. A few years later, a friend even sent Shore one of his own postcards. James L. Enyeart, “Seductive Illusion” in Stephen Shore: Photographs 1973-1993, 20. 263

vernacular and common experience.40

The packaging of the 2005 reissue of American Surfaces was designed to resemble the envelopes that Shore had sent to Kodak to have his films developed. This choice shows a humorous and thoughtful touch, suggesting Shore’s stance on amateurism.

[4-4] Nevertheless, for an earlier edition in 1999, Shore selected U.S. 89, Arizona, June

1972 as the cover of the catalogue, to manifest his original interest in the rethinking of the meaning of landscape, later developed more fully in Uncommon Places. [4-27]

Shore’s U.S. 89, Arizona, June 1972 reveals how man intrudes on nature; consider that the word landscape is a combination of land and scape—the view by human.

[4-27] With the iconic topography of the Southwest, presumably the Painted Desert, in the background, Shore deliberately juxtaposed the mark of human intervention in the foreground of the picture—the highway and its beaming white railing, suggesting the human presence although no figure was incorporated in the picture. The image may seem casual in its tilt, but the diagonal line of the bright, white railing cutting across the mass

40 Shore transformed ordinary things and scenes into the extraordinary, elevating their status to “worth being looked at,” themes that deserve closer attention. Inspired by his predecessors, Evans and Frank, Shore also dedicated his work to exploring the vernacular. As previously mentioned, Jeff Rosenheim, in Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard, provided examples of the close iconographical resemblance between the picture postcard that Evans collected and the photographs he took.40 [1-25, 1-26] The interest in photographing the postcards to translate and comment on American visual culture was not uncommon, as evidenced in Frank’s Hoover Dam, Nevada. [2-29] Evans emulated the theme and pictorial language of the postcard into his photographs, whereas Frank recorded a set of postcards to reflect on the way America was treated over time. See Chapters 1 and 2. 264

of land with its bands of variegated brown, all capped by blue sky, produces pictorial dynamism.

Such an interpretation of the implication of human presence is not unprecedented. In the 18th century France, the presence and sovereignty of the monarchy also could be suggested through the white poplar trees planted on either side of the road throughout the provinces in France.41 In a similar way, the highway railing in Shore’s picture further suggests the involvement of government in the planning and construction of road, in particular the federal government and Interstate Highway System. The highway railing, first and foremost a safety element, also demarcates artificial and natural and may establish a surmountable barrier between road and landscape.

Representing and reflecting the human presence in nature has a long tradition in

American landscape photography. Timothy O’Sullivan recorded the human presence in nature in one of his famous photographs, Sand Dunes, Carson Desert, 1867. [4-28] In that case, O’Sullivan documented the wagon he used as a mobile darkroom, in which he developed his photographs on the road. O’Sullivan photographed his footprints toward the foreground of the picture, suggesting the photographer’s presence and movement.

41 John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 36. 265

Nevertheless, the track left by the wagon in the background signals that the wagon has already turned around and is heading back to wherever it had come from.42 O’Sullivan recorded America’s sublime beauty during his travels across the country for the 1867

Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel Expedition, which served to provide a program for expanding the railroads and industry.43 As the official photographer,

O’Sullivan’s picture was the visual evidence of the exploration of America for commercial purpose made for the government, while Shore’s work was his personal record of the American auto-tourism and cross-country travel.44 These two photographs stimulate a rich conversation iconographically, topographically, and historically.

O’Sullivan’s and Shore’s photographs suggest exploration in a sparsely populated desert territory, as both photographers enact American frontiersman-ship in the Wild West.45

When Shore first visited the Southwest, he was astonished by the more saturated color as well as the blueness of the sky because of the constant steady sunlight in the area,

42 Miles Orvell, American Photography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 51.

43 See the description of the work on the J. Paul Getty Museum website, accessed June 25, 2014. http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=46747.

44 The highways that Shore traveled and photographed also play an important role in transporting goods as the railroads did in O’Sullivan’s day. Both their images suggest the commercial value, but with different intentions; O’Sullivan for government record and the public, and Shore for personal and artistic purpose.

45 These two images also implicate a sense of impasse, as O’Sullivan turned around and Shore was restrained by the railing. 266

which some people or even photographers took for granted. He stated: “I would photograph from Texas to Arizona, going to places where I knew I could have a sunny day every day.”46

Shore’s I-8, Yuma, Arizona, September 23, 1974 [4-29] obviously links to earlier photographic views of the iconic empty highway, such as Dorothea Lange’s Highway to the West, 1938 and Frank’s U.S. 285, New Mexico, 1955. [1-34; 2-3] Shore borrowed the horizontal composition from Lange’s picture to reinforce the immensity and vastness of the space. Color is a key difference between Shore’s picture, and the ones by Lange and

Frank. In I-8, Yuma, Arizona, September 23, 1974 [4-29], he contrasted the blue of the sky with other gray and earthy tones in the lower half of the picture. As the highway and the roadside are positioned geometrically and symmetrically in the lower half of the picture, the cloud enveloped by the blue sky looms expressively.

Since the Interstate highways already were well developed in Shore’s time, unlike Lange and Frank who took photographs from the middle of the road, Shore photographed from the shoulder of the interstate highway to avoid the traffic because he had to set up his cumbersome 8-by-10 view camera on the tripod. Lange recorded the

46 See an interview between Stephen Shore and David Campany, “Ways of Making Pictures,” in Stephen Shore, 29. 267

highway migration in the Depression era of the 1930s, and Frank captured the wanderlust road trip of the Beat generation and alienated postwar American society in the 1950s. In the 1970s, Shore, however, represented a vernacular scene of the empty Interstate highway, yielding magnificent quality and color translated through a large 8-by-10 camera, reminiscent of the American West depicted by the chromatic illumination in landscape paintings in the 19th century. Shore’s picture enables transfiguration, turning an empty, banal scene into an iconic view of the American sublime out of the ordinary.

Shore also depicted a roadside billboard, as Lange often had, but with a different connotation as evidenced in U.S. 97, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973.47

[4-30] That roadside billboard depicts a white snow peak and serene lake with a touch of warm sunlight, a stereotypical scene recalling scenes in landscape paintings of the

American West in the 19th century. The advertisement evokes our sentimental imagination of reality. Shore invited his viewer to wonder and wander in the American

West as depicted in the pictorial space of the billboard, pondering whether it is imaginative or authentic experience of the West. On the compositional level, the viewer

47 The dichotomy between the pictured West and the tangible roadside scene in Shore’s photograph is reminiscent of, but different from Lange’s earlier depictions of a roadside billboard as social criticism of the major manufacturers and the middle class who ignored the hardships of the highway migrant during the Great Depression. [1-30, 1-32, 1-33] 268

also may question or fantasize about the actual scene in the background blocked by the billboard. Shore deliberately positioned the billboard in the middle of his photograph, with white cloud in a blue sky converging toward the center, and the diagonal line of the roadside fences directing the viewer’s vision dynamically. Furthermore, a closer look reveals that parts of the billboard’s probable text are covered over, suggesting an enterprise (and dream) gone bust.

Shore coincidently and thoughtfully presented the iconographical connection between the West and the road, inviting the viewer to reflect on the authenticity of the mythologies of the American landscape. His photograph subverts the notion of “seeing is believing” and questions the role of photography in depicting truth and reality. By presenting a picture within a picture, Shore contemplated the essence of American landscape in common stereotypical visual perception, whether as a fascination visualized in the billboard or as a vernacular scene as documented during one’s tedious highway travel.

Both U.S. 89, Arizona, June 1972 from American Surfaces [4-27] and U.S. 97,

South of Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973 from Uncommon Places [4-30] reflect

Shore’s search during cross-country road trips for meaning in American landscape via its 269

topography and its iconography. Automobile travel across America has a long tradition, signifying people’s fascination for the road trip and the rise of automobile tourism, as often depicted in literature, visual arts, and popular culture. In fact, Horatio Nelson

Jackson and Sewall Crocker set off on America’s first transcontinental road trip in their cherry-red Winton touring car from San Francisco to New York City in 1903, accompanied by their dog, Bud.48 The cross-country road trip also was about embodying a set of American values: freedom, good old American perseverance, and the open road, as Walt Whitman, in Song of the Open Road, famously wrote: “strong and content, I travel the open road.”49

In its early years, motorists often encountered various difficulties on the road, such as breakdowns and unsatisfactory road conditions, especially in inclement weather.

Nevertheless, Americans kept traveling on the road extensively and persistently, which may be reminiscent of the nation’s tradition and psyche of taming and settling the West, from a frontiersman to an explorer on the road. This American identity also was

48 Accessed November 23, 2016, http://www.history.com/news/the-first-great-american-road-trip

49 Jackson’s trans-continental road trip had been made for a fifty dollar bet in a men’s club in San Francisco, when some gentlemen had disdained the future of the horseless carriage—automobile. Jackson had had almost no prior automotive experience, yet still succeeded in traveling in a car across the country in less than 90 days, the duration of the time agreed for the bet, while the actual trip only took him 63 days. See Ken Burns, “Preface” in Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip, by Dayton Duncan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), x. 270

embodied in Manifest Destiny, as the government and civilians all were mobilized to explore and expand the frontier. The spirit of longing and quest for the wilderness continues, but the means of transportation largely switched to automobiles from horses, wagons, carriages, and trains.

Shore inherited the visual and cultural heritage that the genuine and personal encounter of the sublime in American landscape has been fulfilled by “going West,” and inevitably was succeeded by “getting on the road.”50 The juxtaposition of the experience of the road and the West in Shore’s U.S. 89, Arizona, June 1972 or U.S. 97, South of

Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973 [4-27, 4-30] demonstrates his continuing interest in searching and representing both the common and uncommon American experience.

Such a quest also may be related to another photograph of automobile adventure in the early 20th century, Toledo Car at the Grand Canyon, Grand View Point, Arizona,

1902. [4-31] In the picture, Al Doyle, a local tour guide from Flagstaff, Arizona, overlooks the Grand Canyon and enjoys the awe-inspiring landscape. This image documents the adventure of the first automobile to reach the Grand Canyon in January of

50 In his On the Road, Jack Kerouac wrote that Sal “often dreamed of going West to see the country…” “Going West” became a frequent theme of road trips at that time and ever since. Shore was born in 1947, the same year when Frank came to the United States and Kerouac took his first road trip. See Shore, “1947” in A Road Trip Journal, unpaginated. 271

1902. This particular trip showcased both the authentic majestic American landscape as well as the promise of auto engineering. Americans seemingly could conquer the West in an automobile.51 Such conception of an automobile challenge and its visual representation manifest the juxtaposed pride and fantasy over two things that crucially define America—nature and industry—the West and the automobile. Similarly, Shore’s work at times perpetuates this American heritage through the road trip, a blend of conquest, pilgrimage, retreat, and the longing to escape from the city and civilization to commune with nature and wilderness.

Similar to U.S. 89, Arizona, June 1972, [4-27] Shore represented the palpable road trip experience of encountering and rethinking the West in U.S. 97, South of

Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973. [4-30] Rather than the majestic views made by

Timothy O’Sullivan, Carleton Watkins, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, or Minor White

(Shore’s teacher), Shore debated whether the iconic American West still existed as a

“virgin land,” or had it become merely a myth pictured on the billboard as part of the

51 Unlike Doyle’s original plan of driving a Toledo automobile from Flagstaff to Hance’s Point at the Grand Canyon in less than four hours, the actual trip took four days, largely due to mechanical breakdowns and lack of supplies. According to the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, the photograph is credited only to Aultman. The photograph also was published in a magazine, Real West, in 1979 in an article that introduced the life of Allen Doyle, a local tour guide passed away in Flagstaff, Arizona in 1921. The automobile trip from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon included Oliver Lippincott, Winfield Hogaboom, T.M. Chapman, and Al Doyle. Matt Dodge, “Arizona’s Forgotten Guide” Real West May 1979, No. 163, Vol.22, 16–21. 272

roadside landscape.52

Echoing the visual legacies of depicting gas stations, in Beverly Boulevard and

La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, California, June 21, 1975, [4-32] Shore showcased his meticulous composition of a picture within a formalist fashion. He carefully positioned the “Chevron” sign at the upper center in line with “Texaco” in the center background. If

Shore had moved a few steps to the right or left, the symmetry would have fallen apart, and the poles would have appeared tilted, unlike his previous more casually taken gas station photographs, such as Mineral Wells, Texas, June 1972 from American Surfaces.

[4-17] In La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, California, June 21, 1975, [4-32], although the picture is filled with signs and poles, there is a great deal of void in the foreground at the center, reinforced by the pointing arrow of the Chevron sign above, allowing for a stronger sense of alienation and loneliness.53 Shore’s work synthesizes Evans’s formalist tradition, Ruscha’s mobile gaze of wandering on the road and in Los Angeles, as well as

52 See the description on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website, accessed August 7, 2014. http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/284982. Henry Nash Smith’s book Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth was first published in 1950 and reprinted in 1970. The book reflects on the history and significance of the Westward movement as a timely review on the current state of the American West. See Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Lange: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970)

53 In a recent documentary, Shore recollected and explained how he constructed the pictorial space in this photograph, paying attention to details of the lines and positions of each element, as well as their interrelationship, including gas pumps, lamppost, billboards, and signs. Ralph Goertz, Stephen Shore: New Color Photography (D sseldorf: Institut f r Kunstdokumentation und Szenografie, 2014) DVD. 273

Edward Hopper’s chromatic quality which enhances the liveliness of the picture as a frame of reality. [1-21]

With respect to other themes, such as the drive-in theater, Shore photographed it during the day, unlike the more expected on-screen evening hours in shots by Frank or

Friedlander. In the 1970s, drive-in theaters were already on the decline, largely due to burgeoning TV broadcasting and home video industries. Shore often focused on framing the façade of the screen tower frontally and from the non-screen side. In his pictures, the empty, forlorn drive-in theater appears like a worn monument, evoking a nostalgic sense of a bygone era, such as Sidney Lust’s Drive-in Theatre, U.S. 1, College Park, Maryland,

January 21, 1976 and West Ninth Avenue, Amarillo, Texas, October 2, 1974. [4-33, 4-34]

Opened in 1947 equipped with 1,000 parking spaces, Shore photographed the

Sidney Lust’s Drive-in theater he encountered on U.S. 1 on a gloomy day during winter with snow covering part of the ground, indicating the “Lust” was closed for the season.

The murky color also transcribes the low temperature at the scene.54 In contrast, the one in Texas was shot in fall and with warm sunlight echoing the “Sunset” written on the wall juxtaposed with the blue, cloudless sky. Opened in 1949 and located on the historic Route

54 Accessed March 26, 2017, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/10151 274

66, the Sunset Drive-in was the second drive-in theater in Amarillo, and it could accommodate 400 cars. In Shore’s picture, the “Sunset” coincidentally alludes to the decline of the Route 66 and the drive-in industry, as the theater later closed for business in 1976.55 Each picture shows different light, color tone, and warmth, featuring nuanced visual effect, mentality, and cultural significance. In Shore’s work, the drive-in theater becomes an alternate place of spectacle because of the emptiness and isolation of the scene, revealing mixed sentimentality about the intertwined entities of the American movie industry with the automobile and highway culture.

Shore also recorded the interior scene of a restaurant in Sugar Bowl Restaurant,

Gaylord, Michigan, July 7, 1973, [4-35] providing the view from inside out, as if framing the world through the windshield from the driver’s seat. Unlike his predecessor Frank, who focused on the TV set in the restaurant while capturing the bleaching consecrating light entering from the window in his Restaurant, U.S. 1, Leaving Columbia, South

Carolina, [2-15] Shore set his camera up high to focus on the empty booths with another indicator of location—the roadway—framed by the window.56 [4-35] In both cases, the

55 Accessed March, 26, 2017, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/30012

56 Shore carefully presented the vanishing point of the roadway to match the window frame and the signs outside the restaurant. Sugar Bowl Restaurant is located at 216 West Main Street in Gaylord, Michigan. The Main Street is part of Michigan State Highway 32 (M-32), and it intersects with the Business Loop 275

photographers exploited the visual effect of natural light and placement of the window.

By setting the camera high, Shore balanced the light within and outside the restaurant to avoid either underexposure of the interior or overexposure of the landscape in the picture.

The picture yields cinematic quality because the viewer looks at the scene as if a customer walks in and is about to be seated.

Shore’s U.S. 10, Post Falls, Idaho, August 25, 1974 brings to mind Evans’s

Roadside Stand near Birmingham, 1936. [4-36; 1-11] After a few exposures, Evans more engagingly interacted with his subjects and asked the children to pose for him. Shore, however, encountered an unpopulated scene. Although no figures are depicted, a human activity is suggested through the boxes and bags of produce and a car and two trucks with open doors. Shore’s picture is cinematic because it implies human presence before or after the shutter is released, creating ambiguity and giving the space fluidity. The viewer’s focus is constantly shifting between these open doors, while recognizing a participatory feature in reading Shore’s image and wandering in the pictorial space.

Shore represented another mundane scene of Texas in Presidio, Texas, February,

Interstate Highway 75, BL I-75 and Otsego Avenue, where Shore also took another exposure on the same day. Shore departed from Gaylord the next morning and arrived in Paradise, Michigan for lunch, presumably via Interstate Highway 75. See Shore, A Road Trip Journal, unpaginated. 276

21, 1975 from Uncommon Places.57 [4-37] Shore’s exposure presages famous German filmmaker Wim Wenders’s photographic work, this one presumably taken in 1983 and selected from Einmal: Bilder und Geschichten, 1994 / Once: Pictures and Stories, 2001.

This book incorporates Wenders’s travel diary and photographs, including some for the scouting of his road movie, Paris, Texas, 1984.58 [4-38] For Wenders, “Within every photograph there is also the beginning of a story starting ‘once upon a time…’ Every photograph is the first frame of a movie.”59 Wenders’s commentary on “shooting pictures” as both a photographer and a filmmaker is instrumental to reinterpret any road photograph by Shore as if it is a film still of the whole road journey. Wenders also noted:

“I drove across Texas for weeks. If I was to define Texas by a single image, I’d say: an

57 The region’s character and local identity remind us gain of that depicted in Meindert Hobbema’s Avenue at Middelharnis, 1689 [1-38] through an inviting visual effect—the compelling frontal and linear compositional mechanism. In Hobbema’s painting, the visual elements, such as the farmer, the low horizon and open sky, symmetrical lines of tall trees, and the village and the church tower, are replaced by a man wearing a cowboy hat, vernacular dirt road, wires and poles, and the barren landscape in the background in Shore’s picture.

58 In late 1983, Wenders drove through California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to look for subjects and locations that would bring the desolate landscape of the American West for his film, Paris, Texas, 1984. The photographs he took during this trip were first exhibited in 1986 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1986 as Written in the West, and first published in German in 1987 and in English in 2000 under the same title, then the expanded edition in 2015 as Written in the West, Revisited. Some of the images taken during this trip also are included in another of his book, Einmal: Bilder und Geschichten, 1994 / Once: Pictures and Stories, 2001, which incorporates his texts and photographs.

59 Wim Wenders, “To Shoot Pictures…” in Once: Pictures and Stories (Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2010, 2001), 12. 277

old man with a cowboy hat. Old cowboys are the saddest and most touching figures.”60

The time period and many of the scenes in Wenders’s 1984 road movie Paris,

Texas seem to resonate with Shore’s work, as both artists extensively traveled on the road and deeply drawn to the landscape of the American West.61 Shore’s Presidio, Texas,

February, 21, 1975 [4-37] and Wenders’s photograph [4-38] both include low rise houses and a back street of small towns in the Southwest. Both pictures depict vast open space along with poles and wires that produce linear perspective and pictorial depth. [1-38]

Furthermore, both images include a man wearing a classic cowboy hat, indicating the regional identity. In Wenders’s picture, the man shows his back to the viewer; whereas in

Shore’s, the subject looks at Shore’s camera from a distance as Shore sets up the camera on the tripod.62 The landscape in the background in Shore’s picture also delineates the geographical feature of the region.

During the road trip across the country, the hotel interior often became an

60 Wenders, Once: Pictures and Stories, 204.

61 Part of the storyline in Wenders’s film took place in Texas, while Shore also stated that he wanted to travel the southernmost route through the Southwest, as Presidio is located on the US-Mexico border. For Shore’s route, see “An Interview with Stephen Shore,” conducted by Christopher Brayshaw, accessed December 17, 2016, http://www.doppelgangermagazine.com/march/chris_brayshaw_march.html For Wenders, prior to the filming of Paris, Texas, he also drove the length of the entire US-Mexico border, more than 1,500 miles. See Wim Wenders, “Like Flying Blind without Instruments: On the Turning Point in Paris, Texas” in Logic of Images: Essays and Conversations (London: Faber, 1992), 66.

62 A similar gaze of the subject caused by the photographer’s action of setting the camera on the tripod in the street can be found in Evans’s Garage in Southern City Outskirts, 1936. [1-12] 278

inevitable view for a motorist like Shore. He reflected on the meaning of the “landscape” in Room 219, Holiday Inn, Winter Haven, Florida, November 16, 1977. [4-39] Unlike his

Durango, Colorado, June 1973 from American Surfaces, [4-6] which documented a visual representation of the landscape in the American West, here Shore recorded a view of classic colonnaded ruins connected to the Greco-Roman civilization. The mural on the wall above the bed was idyllic and out of context in Room 219, Holiday Inn, Winter

Haven, Florida, November 16, 1977. [4-39] Shore represented the intriguing, unreal, exotic, and nostalgic landscape in his room with his wife Ginger lying on the bed.

The ancient architecture on the wall that Shore photographed not only manifests an archaic and distant visual legacy, but also lends another dimension for interpreting

Shore’s depiction, recalling the pictorial and intellectual tradition of the Grand Tour. As numerous aristocrats, artists, and cultural elites in the past had traveled to Italy to visit the

Greco-Roman, Renaissance, and Baroque masterpieces in person, repositioning themselves in the great civilization, Shore’s road trip carried the similar purpose and significance, to fully witness and experience America.

Through this picture, Shore possibly disclosed deeper issues—the displacement and inconsistency of the visual identification of place. The photograph records what 279

Shore saw, his genuine encounters during his road trip, common yet uncommon; the image on the wall was a reflection of the conception of the place and non-place. It is ironic for Shore to travel across America, the New World, but to encounter a pictorial reference to Greco-Roman civilization in Europe, suggesting the incongruous indexicality.

The picture becomes a revelation of the sense of place. Shore’s view allows us to ponder whether travel corresponds to an expected visual experience; or, on the contrary, to a scene and thing out of place and context.

As discussed, Frank purposely photographed and arranged an American flag to begin each of the four sections in his The Americans (see Chapter 2). In contrast, Shore alludes to the symbol of the nation in a different way. For example, in Brownsville,

Tennessee, May 3, 1974, [4-40] he documented a roadside star-spangled farmhouse as an expression of the American identity. The red paint and white stars on its wall suggest the owner’s patriotism, which obviously attracted Shore’s attention during his long drive. The depiction also shows Shore’s interest in finding homespun manifestations of

American-ness in common culture.

While Shore described American-ness through a star-spangled farmhouse on the roadside, he also suggested some art-related messages through his other images. In 280

Amarillo, Texas, July, 1972 from American Surfaces, [4-41] he haphazardly photographed the gigantic red, yellow, blue “ART” canvas foam sign on the roadside, presumably at a ranch. In Cedar Springs Road, Dallas, Texas, June 5, 1976 from

Uncommon Places, [4-42] Shore recorded a sign that read: “John F. Kennedy said: ‘art is truth.’” Considering the effort to set up his cumbersome camera on the tripod facing upward, Shore was no doubt intrigued by the quote contemplating the purpose of his trip and the meaning of art.

President Kennedy’s original quote was “We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.” 63 In a way, Shore’s photographic road trip of discovering, documenting, celebrating, and contemplating the American landscape and life during the Cold War years probably could be considered as propaganda and truth at the same time. While many major current events of domestic and international politics were ignored in Shore’s work, the appearance and dimension of consumerism, tourism, and materialism of a prosperous American society often was portrayed.

Shore’s road photographs not only rely on a certain truth, but also recite a certain

63 The remarks by John F. Kennedy on “Art is Truth” come from his speech in honor of the poet Robert Frost on October 26, 1963 at Amherst College in Massachusetts. See the speech transcript on National Endowment for the Arts website, accessed August 11, 2014, http://arts.gov/about/kennedy. 281

truth. As Kennedy asserted in the same quote that “In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.”64 In a way, Shore’s work reaffirmed the myth of American life and travel on the road. In Uncommon Places, through his usage of a large 8-by-10 view camera and color photography, Shore represented the true colors of America truthfully and thoughtfully. In his images, everything receives relatively equal treatment, bridging the high and low and fine art photography and common visual culture.

Although Kennedy stated: “art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology,”65 Shore’s road photographs do unveil some ideological messages about American life and society, proclaiming the notion of the

American way. The freedom and prosperity that were prerequisites for a road trip across

America best served as powerful weapons to celebrate the individualism, capitalism, and democracy in the United States. Shore’s images of common places became uncommon as they promoted the truth and myth of the American way that are more powerful than what

President Kennedy believed and proclaimed. These common places thoughtfully pictured by Shore also illustrate the uncommon truth that American life and landscape are

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid. 282

profusely intertwined with automobility, a feature deeply related with American identity.

Rethinking the American Landscape: the New West and the New Topographics

Shore’s work was included in the seminal 1975 exhibition, New Topographics:

Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape held at the International Museum of

Photography at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York along with photographs by Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank

Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, and Henry Wessel Jr., whose works concurrently document and reconsider the American landscape of the time. Some of the images from the exhibition suggested how the mobility of the automobile and highway culture played an important role in American life and landscape.

In the same year, Lee Friedlander recorded people moving their house on the highway in House on Highway, 1975. [4-43] This American psyche of restlessness also resonates with the function and fascination of mobility that the two campers provide in

Shore’s Bozeman, Montana, 1981. [4-44] Road vehicles long had served as homes for the itinerant, and campers and other types of recreational vehicles became an extension of the 283

home because of the function as shelters, as well as the speed and readiness.66 Two different exposures reveal a similar notion about mobility, suggesting Americans on the move. In fact, Shore lived in Bozeman, Montana briefly. Although he mainly resided and taught in New York, he still revisited Bozeman frequently. He had a personal investment in the place, and often photographed the natural and vernacular landscape of the area.67

Shore’s depiction of a “machine in the garden”—an automobile in a rural, residential landscape—was reminiscent of the portrayal in Evans’s Westchester, New York,

Farmhouse, 1931. [1-13] In the 1970s, especially with burgeoning Interstate highways and newly-built residential areas in the suburbs, the scene of automobiles in the “ordinary landscape” became more common to Americans as well as to scholars of cultural geography and landscape studies. Houses in the suburb were designed with accessible driveways and garages, and it became essential for some newly built houses to having parking for multiple cars. Suburbanization greatly depends on convenient automobile

66 Roger White, “Introduction,” in Home on the Road: The Motor Home in America (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), 1.

67 Sally Eauclaire, New Color / New Work: Eighteen Photographic Essays (New York: Abbeville Press, 1984), 225. Eauclaire mentioned that Shore used to live in Montana for a while. Also, Colin Naylor ed., Contemporary Photographers (Chicago: St. James Press, 1988), 936. In terms of the contact information, Shore’s personal address was in Bozeman, Montana. During my visit to the opening for the exhibition The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas on February 26, 2016, Shore put his sticker on Bozeman at the exit of the exhibition, showing where he would like to pay a visit for his next road trip. 284

travel and commuting. The highway system inevitably precipitated suburbanization, and vice versa.

The rapid change in the American landscape due to automobility and suburbanization became one of the central issues for photographers to represent and comment on in the New Topographics. Among them, Adams illustrated the new housing construction in suburban areas, especially in and around Denver where he lived, describing a larger picture of the appearance of the new West. In Mobile Homes,

Jefferson County, Colorado, 1973, [4-45] he framed the Rocky Mountains in the background and juxtaposed it with signs of human intervention and habitation in the foreground, as Jefferson County was known as the gateway to the Rocky Mountains. A mobile home subverts the notion that a dwelling place has to be immobile, and it is usually more affordable than a regular house.68 While a camper provides home-like travel experience, the mobile home functions as movable housing and is more spacious

68 See J. B. Jackson, “The Movable Dwelling and How It Came to America,” in Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, 91–101. According to Jackson, the word “dwelling” or “to dwell” in English has a distinct meaning. It means to pause, to stay put for a length of time, which implies that people will eventually move on. Therefore the dwelling place should perhaps be seen as temporary. However, in French or German, the equivalent expression refers to a habitual action, closely related to the words for custom or habit: habitude and gewohnheit. 285

than a camper.69 The mobile home also offers easy connection to gas, electricity, and water once people relocate to any equipped mobile home park. Mobile home parks primarily locate in rural and suburban areas due to the cost and the limit availability of land in cities, therefore the accessibility through highways is crucial.

Adams depicted a residential area in the suburbs designed for the mobile homes; whereas as depicted by Friedlander, any of these houses could have been on the move. In conjunction with the camper theme that Shore depicted, these representations embodied a persistent and prevalent idea about American mobility: the ability to relocate with their own houses or to travel in the home-like vehicles. People can blend in the landscape more easily. These options for mobility suggest the premise and promise of individualism and freedom in America, partly associated with the shared responsibility or social order of the community. Although owners may have different reasons or economic issues lead to their choices, mobile homes, trailers, and campers provide the freedom to relocate to other places more easily. This kind of American value and culture worked reciprocally, and

69 Derived from trailer, mobile homes were later upgraded and marketed primarily as inexpensive form of housing designed to be set up and left in a location. Trailers are more affordable than mobile homes/manufactured homes, and are sometimes stereotyped as housing for low-income family. Some campers and recreational vehicles, however, offer more comfortable experience. Since June 15, 1976, mobile homes built in the United States are legally referred to as manufactured homes to meet the Federal Housing Administration requirements. The manufactured homes are factory manufactured and sent to a location, and they usually are kept there permanently now. 286

refashioned portions of the American landscape.70

Along with pictures by other photographers in the New Topographics, Adams’s work continued and renewed the topographical discourse of the 19th century landscape photography in America, as in photographs by Timothy O’Sullivan, Carleton E. Watkins, and others. While photographers continued to portray the American landscape, the appearance of the land and living environment had changed over time.

Adams was determined to record the look of the new West, as a connection to and variation from its older version. After the United States Air Force Academy was established in 1954 in Colorado, the region experienced a burgeoning construction in these suburban residential areas, one of Adams’s central subjects. He published his pertinent and timely breakthrough series, The New West: Landscapes along the Colorado

Front Range, in 1974. For Adams, while the beauty of the natural landscape from mountains to prairies appears in his photo, the more important issue was the new residential areas and its adjacent strip malls and side roads. He pressed the viewer to reconsider the dichotomy of the ideal natural landscape of the old West and the growing

70 J.B. Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, 100–101. Similar temporary dwellings offer the freedom from burdensome emotional ties with the environment; freedom from communal responsibilities; freedom from the tyranny of traditional home and its possessions; the freedom from belonging to a tight knit social order; and the freedom to move on to somewhere else. 287

urban sprawl of the new West. Between the old and the new West, his poetic photographs of the landscape of the Rocky Mountains suggest his sentimental and nostalgic reflection on the pressing issues of the environment.71

Adams captured the vastness and immensity of open space at a local drive-in theater in Outdoor Theater and Cheyenne Mountain, 1968. [4-46] While Shore’s drive-in pictures were taken during the day and implied the decline of the drive-in theaters in the

1970s, [4-33, 4-34] Adams’s image focuses more on the drive-in’s relationship to the surrounding geography of the West. They both were more interested in depicting the landscape than human activity of going to the movies, as was shown in previous pictures by Frank or Friedlander. [2-16; 3-20]

In this picture by Adams, the natural landscape of the Cheyenne Mountain in the background and the greater proportion of sky dominating the picture were juxtaposed with the human intervention in the form of the drive-in in the foreground. Unlike Shore’s color photographs, Adams’s black-and-white pictures elicit a sense of commemoration as a conventional feature in the tradition of documentary, landscape, and fine art photography. The black-and-white quality of the picture especially resonated with

71 Colin Naylor ed., Contemporary Photographers, 10. 288

people’s recollection of the depiction of the West in landscape photography in the 19th century, but the paradigm was replaced or complemented by an empty roadside theater.

After many years of teaching photography at Bard College, Shore wrote The

Nature of Photographs. He discussed the depictive and mental level of a photograph, as well as the use of focal length. He also provided a comparative study of Adams’s Outdoor

Theater and Cheyenne Mountain, 1968 [4-46] with Evans’s Gas Station, Reedsville, West

Virginia, 1936. [1-10] In the former, the viewer’s eyes move from the parking lot in the foreground to the screen in the middle ground, and gradually to the mountain and the sky that occupy most of the picture. The focal point of the viewer moves back and forth between the mountain, sky, and the cloud. The cloud somehow has been pushed closer to the viewer in the process of moving the focal point. On the contrary, in Evans’s Gas

Station, Reedsville, West Virginia, 1936, [1-10] the frame was more similar to a collage, dissected and arranged by the wires. Each photograph exemplifies a distinct visual vocabulary from the other.72 Evans was interested in the semiotic symbolism and the visual effect of his modernist formalism; Adams represented the open sky and the landscape, reciting the current state of the West and its sublimity, as well as recalling an

72 Stephen Shore, The Nature of Photographs (New York: Phaidon, 2007), 84, 108. 289

earlier tradition in landscape photography.

Adams photographed a roadside sign erected by a local developer at a highway intersection in Along Interstate 25, 1968-71 from The New West: Landscapes along the

Colorado Front Range. [4-47] The image also alludes to the notion of selling land. The roadway became an inevitable subject for photographers, suggesting the environment that people built, purchased, and lived near. Evidently, Adams and Shore both shared some of the artistic interests and photographic subjects in their pictures along with other photographers in New Topographics to focus on the emerging alteration of the American landscape, its topography and iconography.

The visual vocabulary, cultural reference, and aesthetic choice of the New

Topographics departed from the established tradition of landscape photography advocated by Ansel Adams.73 When New Topographics re-exhibited in the United States and traveled globally from 2009 to 2012, the exhibition included Rucha’s work that exemplifies a detached, indifferent, casual gaze and presages the photographs in New

Topographics. Juha Tolonen argued that objectivity and neutrality were more elaborated and represented rather than the subjectivity and transcendence in this art and

73 Juha Tolonen, “New Topographics: Withholding Judgement” in Photography and Landscape by Rodney James Giblett and Juha Pentti Tolonen (Bristol, UK; Chicago: Intellect, 2012), 156. 290

photographic movement. In a way, New Topographics photographers became cartographers, providing unsentimental observations of the relationship between objects in the landscape and the life of the land. While traditional landscape photography formerly focused on idealized nature with limited marks of human interference, signs of human intervention dominated the images of the New Topographics.74

The Anglo settlement of the American West responded to the prophecy of

Manifest Destiny, a belief in the 19th century that encouraged people to explore, conquer, and claim new territories.75 Many of the New Topographics photographs were interpreted as a critical visual account of the success as well as the failure of this movement of

Westward Expansion. Their landscapes suggest the direct consequences of the implementation of the American dream, and they became part of the focus in the New

Topographics. The well-being of the increasing middle class became the manifestation of affluence and prosperity in postwar America. Hence, the middle-class influx into the suburbs became part of the subjects featured in the depictions of landscape in New

74 Ibid., 157–158.

75 Eva Respini, Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2009), 13. 291

Topographics.76

Many pictures from the New Topographics, especially by Robert Adams and

Shore, focus on an environment that had been changed by the automobile and highway, revealing an alteration of the land, mostly in the West, that resulted from human habitation. The theme had been depicted in the 19th century but with epic qualities, sentimentality, and romanticism.77

Regardless the difference in style and content, New Topographics resonated with an increasing awareness of environmentalism in the United States. This was evidenced in the photographs by Ansel Adams and other Sierra Club photographers, urging Americans to experience and to preserve nature. Thomas Weski noted that Robert Adams was the first photographer to integrate ecological awareness into his work, admonishing the consequences of the inroads of civilization, the increasing industrialization and urbanization, and the attendant changes in the natural and cultural landscape. Despite his declared message, Robert Adams’s work was never predominantly moralizing but always

76 Tolonen, “New Topographics: Withholding Judgement” in Photography and Landscape by Rodney James Giblett and Juha Pentti Tolonen, 161.

77 Alison Nordstr m, “After New: Thinking about New Topographics from 1975 from the Present” in New Topographics (Tucson, A : Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; Rochester, NY: George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film; G ttingen: Steidl, 2009) 76. 292

carefully composed and photographed with the greatest respect for his subjects.78

The environmentalism of the 1960s and 1970s brought attention to the amelioration of environmental issues in cities, suburbs, and other everyday settings.79

Finis Dunaway reaffirmed that Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, and other photographers from the New Topographics rarely included people in their pictures. Although most of the images are curiously and sometimes eerily depopulated, the houses, highways, automobiles, and strip malls implied human presence and alteration of the landscape.80

In his Newly Occupied Tract Houses, Colorado Springs, 1968, [4-48] Robert Adams showed a mid-1950s Ford parked at the end of a cul-de-sac in a recently constructed neighborhood, contrasting the flat vastness of the suburb with the towering mountain beyond. No trees or any plant life can be found in the foreground. The land seems to be scarred and barren, delineating a living environment based on sprawling automobile-centered developments.81

78 Thomas Weski, “No Scrawling, Scratching, and Scribbling on the Plate,” in How You Look At It: Photographs of the 20th Century (New York: D.A.P., 2000), 35.

79 Finis Dunaway, “Beyond Wilderness, Robert Adams, New Topographics, and the Aesthetics of Ecological Citizenship” in Reframing the New Topographics, eds. Greg Foster-Rice and John Rohrbach (Chicago: Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago, 2010), 14.

80 Ibid., 24.

81 Ibid., 25–26. 293

As an idealizer, Ansel Adams’s pictures appealed to the public because they fulfilled the desire to find a distant, unattainable, and forever young landscape, as the dream of an Edenic America oscillated between reality and memory. In contrast, Robert

Adams rejected such an approach and chose to reimage the West. The landscape in his

West was a place of habitation, not a migration made in Conestoga wagons leading to sod houses on the high plains but in Fords to split-level houses.82

While Robert Adams and several other New Topographics photographers reconsidered the particularities of specific local landscape and distinctive architectural features, Frank Gohlke depicted a scene that could be situated almost anywhere. In

Landscape, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1974, Gohlke captured a vast parking lot, in which the asphalt leads to a grassy slope with a roadway in distance. [4-49] A big Kmart sign is shown in the picture, suggesting the store was somewhere outside the frame but near-by.

Dunaway argued that other than the title, nothing indicated where the picture was taken.

This picture creates a sense of placeless-ness, and it could have been interchangeable with pictures taken by Robert Adams in Denver, as one of the critics commented on

82 Nicholas Howe, “Two Landscapes, Two Stories: Anglo-Saxon England and the United States,” in Natures Past: The Environment and Human History (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2007), 228–229. 294

Robert Adams’s pictures from the series Denver: A Photographic Survey of the

Metropolitan Area, 1977, “very little tells us that this is Denver.”83 Gohlke’s picture of a

Kmart parking lot, especially its lack of local, geographic specificity, shares common qualities with works by other New Topographics photographers. Both Golhke and Robert

Adams sought to document the homogenized landscape in daily life. They conveyed a particular kind of space in St. Paul and Denver, yet these depictions could have been interchangeable because automobility produced a standardized sprawl across America.84

This sense of placeless-ness also appears in some of Shore’s portrayals of parking lots, gas stations, and shopping malls across America.

Dunaway further asserted the nuances between photographs taken by Robert

Adams and Shore as an ongoing debate over mass culture, whether to “view commercial artifacts as ugly, tasteless desecrations of the landscape, or as beautiful, democratic expressions of popular desires.”85 Shore tended to focus more on the positive framing of mass culture, considering “the commercialized landscape as a space that provides a

83 Dunaway, “Beyond Wilderness, Robert Adams, New Topographics, and the Aesthetics of Ecological Citizenship” in Reframing the New Topographics, 38–39. For the original quote of the comment, see Phil Patton, review of Denver: A Photographic Survey of the Metropolitan Area in Art in America (November/December 1977): 35. The 92 photographs from the series were taken between 1973 and 1974.

84 Dunaway, “Beyond Wilderness, Robert Adams, New Topographics, and the Aesthetics of Ecological Citizenship,” in Reframing the New Topographics, 38–39.

85 Ibid., 15. 295

measure to freedom and autonomy to ordinary people.”86 On the other hand, Robert

Adams was more critical, raising more environmental concerns. Rather than an image world of chaotic, patterning of cars, houses, businesses, and roads, Shore’s photographs of suburban neighborhoods, corporate signage, and commercial strips present these landscapes to the viewer as orderly welcoming settings. His photographs do not engage explicitly with environmental problems but still imply a sense of wonder and appreciation in familiar and mundane places.87

Photographers of the New Topographics questioned the familiar framings of the

West and undermined the vision of untouched, pure nature for individuals and the nation.

These photographers, especially Robert Adams, did not always find hope in the tangled and hybrid landscape of contemporary America, yet still recognized ecological citizenship beyond the wilderness.88

New Color of the Old South: William Eggleston’s Democratic Camera

Also traveling on the road extensively, William Eggleston was another early pioneer of color photography together with Shore. Unlike Shore, who traveled across and

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid., 33–34.

88 Ibid., 43. 296

around the country, even including parts of Canada, Eggleston mainly photographed in the South and only traveled across the Southwestern states to California.89

Eggleston’s Los Alamos is a selection of photographs from approximately 2200 images he photographed between 1966 and 1974. The title occurred after he visited Los

Alamos, New Mexico, the forested site of the development of the atomic bomb.90

Another of his significant series, William Eggleston’s Guide, accompanied an exhibition

Photographs by William Eggleston at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1976. It was a watershed for embracing and recognizing the status of color images in fine art photography.91 Although John Szarkowski, in William Eggleston’s Guide, described: “As

89 Shore journeyed through part of Canada in 1974 because he wanted to make a big loop for his cross-country road trip, including traveling up to Maine and along the northernmost highway in New England, across Canada to Alberta, then back to America to a northerly route to the West Coast. Shore employed a similar method for taking the westernmost route down the Pacific coast and the southernmost route though the Southwest. See “An Interview with Stephen Shore,” conducted by Christopher Brayshaw, accessed December 17, 2016, http://www.doppelgangermagazine.com/march/chris_brayshaw_march.html

90 See Walter Hopps, “Introduction,” Los Alamos (Zurich; New York: SCALO, 2003), also William Eggleston Trust website, accessed August 13, 2014. http://www.egglestontrust.com/los_alamos_intro.html.

91 When being asked the reason and context of transformation from black-and-white to color in fine art photography, Shore replied that Eggleston and he were both at the right moment when most other media in the image world, such as commercials and magazines, already had embraced color. See Michael Almereyda, William Eggleston in the Real World (New York: Palm Pictures, 2005). The exhibition was not the museum’s first solo exhibition of color photography, as is commonly believed, but the William Eggleston’s Guide was its first catalogue devoted to color photography. The confusion was partly due to John Szarkowski’s reference to Eggleston as “the inventor of color photography” in several interviews. See Elisabeth Sussman and Thomas Weski, William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2008), 11. Also Kevin Moore, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970–1980 (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010), 8, 14, 18. In 1967, Szarkowski had already had seen and wanted to exhibit Eggleston’s work; the pictures were not installed until 1976. Such caution and hesitation suggest accepting color was more a matter of culture than technology. On the other hand, in the fall of 1972, Shore exhibited his American Surfaces in Light Gallery in New York. 297

pictures…these seem to me perfect,” critic such as Hilton Kramer famously responded:

“Perfectly banal, perhaps. Perfectly boring, certainly.”92

In a 1969 essay on photography, before embracing color late in his career, Evans asserted that “Color photography is vulgar.”93 Frank also stated: “Black and white are the colors of photography.”94 Although Eggleston had admired Henri Cartier-Bresson, who advocated the “decisive moment,” he told Eggleston in a private party that “You know,

William, color is bullshit.”95 These statements illustrate the debate of the black-and-white between the color in fine art photography, demonstrating the pivotal role of Eggleston as a pioneer of color by the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s.

Despite the fact that being influenced by Evans, Frank, and Cartier-Bresson,

Eggleston’s color photographs are seemingly snapshots of personal life and travel, rather than conventional documentary photography for the public with a social-critically or

92 See John Szarkowski, William Eggleston’s Guide (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1976), 14. Hilton Kramer, “Art: Focus on Photo Shows,” New York Times, May 28, 1976, 62.

93 Walker Evans, “Quality: Its Image in the Arts,” cited in Judith Keller, Walker Evans: The Getty Museum Collection (London: Thames & Hudson, 1995), 304. Also Kevin Moore, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970–1980 (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010), 19. For Evans, “vulgar” means “popular” as well as “bad taste.”

94 See “Tracking the Rise of Color on film,” New York Times August, 6, 2010, accessed December, 4 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/nyregion/08artsnj.html

95 See “William Eggleston, the Pioneer of Color Photography,” New York Times, October 17, 2016, accessed December, 4, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/t-magazine/william-eggleston-photographer-interview-augusten-burro ughs.html 298

humanitarian purpose. For William Eggleston’s Guide, he selected 75 images from the photographs he took during 1969 and 1971 mainly near where he lived in Memphis,

Tennessee. Before the exhibition and publication of the William Eggleston’s Guide in

1976, he only worked on his Los Alamos project during that time for his application for the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974.96 Many images from both series share similar subject matter and visual qualities with Shore’s photographs, especially American

Surfaces, in which Shore still used a 35mm camera, to provide more spontaneous, snapshot-like pictures. Many pictures by both artists depict the roadside landscapes and the visual experience of traveling on the road in the 1970s.

Shore’s American Surfaces and Eggleston’s work both conform to Straight photography and yielded a snapshot style.97 Eggleston’s work often provides the viewer with the same effect and feeling as Shore’s. As photographer Raymond Moore stated: “he

(Eggleston) finds the uncommonness of the commonplace in ordinary scenes and

96 See an interview between Eggleston and Ute Eskildsen, The Hasselblad Award 1998: William Eggleston (G teborg, Sweden, 1999), and the same interview on William Eggleston Trust website, accessed August 13, 2014. http://www.egglestontrust.com/hasselblad_interview.html

97 When comparing with other fine art photographers whose work were usually more seriously composed and aimed for museum setting, Barbara Norfleet mentioned that Eggleston’s work yielded a snapshot style like an amateur photographer taking pictures of his friends and surroundings. See Colin Naylor ed., Contemporary Photographers, 271. 299

places.”98 Eggleston consistently focused on the ordinary, everyday subjects, objects, and landscape similar to Shore’s photographic vocabularies and aesthetic interest. Both photographers celebrated the beauty of the ordinary, turning overlooked and trivial subjects into something of visual value.

Eggleston was born in Memphis, and his Southern Environs of Memphis, 1971

[4-50] from William Eggleston’s Guide documents a residential area in the South, suggesting his personal connection to the place. Eggleston purposely lowered his camera to position the automobile at the eye level as well as positioning it in the center of the picture. The photograph provides enough information about the neighborhood in the suburbs with significant distance between the automobile and the photographer.

Another picture, Memphis, 1969, [4-51] provides the appearance of the residential area, and more importantly presents Eggleston’s idiosyncratic view of an ordinary object—a tricycle. Eggleston dropped his camera almost to the ground as if he was showing the perspective of an infant, a pet or a bug. Eggleston gave an extraordinary angle of an ordinary view of a child’s tricycle in the yard of a common suburban

98 See the description on the Victoria and Albert Museum website, accessed August 13, 2014, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O93824/untitled-for-the-portfolio-southern-photograph-eggleston-william /. 300

residence, an ideal home for a middle-class family in postwar America. When “Levittown” was advertised, a commercial for the developments sometimes presented houses accompanied by cars and tricycles to delineate the view of the neighborhood.99

In Eggleston’s picture, the tiny tricycle turns into a gigantic monument through his seemingly casual but in fact purposeful framing. He takes advantage of a car parked across the street, framing it through the front and rear wheels of the tricycle, interestingly juxtaposing an adult’s car and a child’s vehicle. In the 1976 exhibition Signs of Life:

Symbols in the American City at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, part of the U.S.

Bicentennial celebration, Robert Venturi included Shore’s photographs of a streetscape to recreate the views of ordinary life and landscape in America. Shore’s photographs were enlarged as posters on the wall, juxtaposed with Venturi’s own text on the study of symbols in the American environments—private homes, suburban strip, and the main street. As one section of the exhibition and the first color image shown in the catalogue,

Venturi restaged a scene from one of Shore’s photographs, in which a tricycle was parked on the sidewalk in a residential area. Venturi mimicked the scene with a replica of the

99 Dan McNichol, The Roads that Build American: The Incredible Story of the U.S. Interstate System (New York: Sterling Pub., 2006), 108-111. When Nikita Khrushchev, the Premier of the Soviet Union, visited the United States in 1959, President Eisenhower responded to the press that he would like Khrushchev visit “Levittown”—the ideal model of the American dream and residential life during the Cold War. 301

tricycle as part of the installation in the gallery.100 [4-52] A tricycle also stood as a symbol of American life, perhaps as a prototype of the automobile, offering preliminary driving or riding experience for children. Unlike Shore’s documentation through the perspective of an adult and a camera mounted on the tripod, Eggleston monumentalized the tricycle in his picture from an unconventional position.

Eggleston documented his regional road trip across the American Southwest, and those photographs became the body of work in Los Alamos. Eggleston traveled with his curator friend Walter Hopps and Dennis Hopper, the director and actor of Easy Rider.

They began their trip from Memphis to Mississippi, then headed on to New Orleans, Las

Vegas, and Southern California; their last stop was at Santa Monica beach. Eggleston and

Shore both photographed people they encountered working at the roadside services, recording their look, outfit, and surroundings. [4-53, 4-54] Unlike Shore asked his subject to pose for him, Eggleston snapped the shot from the side, and his subject was unaware of the camera.

Furthermore, Eggleston recorded a number of restaurants and parking lots, as shown in Mississippi, 1971–1974 from Los Alamos, a common scene of the roadside.

100 Venturi and Rauch, Renwick Gallery, Signs of Life: Symbols in American City (Washington: Aperture, 1976). The exhibition catalogue is not paginated. 302

[4-55] Eggleston lowered his camera, presenting ambiguous viewpoints between the eye level of a pedestrian and a motorist in the car, a similar visual effect employed in Edward

Hopper’s Gas, 1940. [1-21]

A similar viewpoint can be found in another parking lot picture from Eggleston’s

Election Eve, 1977 [4-56] a series commissioned by Rolling Stone to photograph Plains,

Georgia before the election of President Jimmy Carter. Eggleston also naturally lowered his camera in order to record the bumper sticker “Jimmy Carter President,” implying a political message of local support for President Carter, a former state senator and

Governor of Georgia. Eggleston presented a sense of emptiness by leading the viewer’s attention from the back of the car on the right to the empty space of the driveway and parking lot on the left. The picture also invites the viewer to look at the trivial common culture and ordinary scene, such as a bumper sticker and a parking lot, subthemes of automobile culture.101

Adam D. Weinberg pointed out that Eggleston’s photographs often echo the visual qualities revealed in Edward Hopper’s paintings, and both Eggleston and Edward

Hopper were drawn to the vernacular, quotidian, and the disregarded. Similar to Edward

101 See William Eggleston Trust website for his timeline, accessed August 21, 2014. http://www.egglestontrust.com/. 303

Hopper, Eggleston was a master of the glance, capturing moments, places, and objects that most others found fleeting and unremarkable. Weinberg argued that Edward Hopper also had a “democratic way of looking around.”102 Many of Edward Hopper’s and

Eggleston’s images are suggestive, transcribing a narrative or the cinematic quality.

Thomas Weski elaborated on the alienation, loneliness, and longing accompanied by the new commercial developments often found in Eggleston’s work. Eggleston therefore connected to an American artistic tradition associated with the symptoms of a modern faceless society in portraying the apparently trivial or banal from the everyday.103

Edward Hopper intended to represent the alienated and lonesome feeling in his pictures either in the city or in a rural setting; Eggleston also elicited a similar feeling of Southern life and traveling on the road, frequently encountering commercial roadside business.104

Recasting the Roadside: Joel Sternfeld’s American Prospects

The sense of emptiness as suggested in a forlorn place or object became

102 Adam D. Weinberg, “Preface” in William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 by Elisabeth Sussman and Thomas Weski (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2008), xiii.

103 Thomas Weski, “I Can’t Fly, But I Can Make Experiments” in William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961–2008, 3–5.

104 Since his watershed exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1976, Eggleston’s work and his influence have been cited by several film directors, such as John Huston, Gus Van Sant, and David Lynch. See the press release for recent Eggleston exhibition at the University of Mississippi Museum in 2016, accessed April 12, 2017, https://news.olemiss.edu/um-museum-exhibit-features-work-william-eggleston/ 304

prevalent and quintessential for photographers in their record of the visual, physical, and mental experience of a road trip. Shore depicted a forlorn, banal roadside scene in U.S. 1

Arundel, Maine, July 17, 1974. [4-57] Shore kept significant distance between the telephone booth and the camera, presenting a stronger sense of detachment, and the booth is juxtaposed with a vernacular roadside landscape and open sky. The empty ground around the telephone booth reinforces the sense of loneliness, and it was easy for the viewer to identify with the desolate booth, as if it was the personification of a looming human figure, surrounded by isolation and alienation. This concept allows a reasonable connection to the visual perception of a highway traveler. As the telephone booth is designed for human communication, thus the focus of mind of a traveler or a viewer becomes multi-layered. Although the picture is a mundane roadside scene, it suggests symbolic imaginative space and psychological effect.

Similar to Shore, Joel Sternfeld persistently developed his interest in portraying forlorn roadside scenes during his cross-country road trip. In Roadside Rest Area, White

Sand, New Mexico, September, 1980, [4-58] Sternfeld documented a curious scene with a rocket as a public sculpture at a roadside rest area. Sternfeld also recorded an eerie empty scene with a dilapidated basketball hoop in Near Lake Powell, Arizona, August, 1979. 305

[4-59] Sternfeld’s representations of place lead the viewer to wander and wonder at the landscape in relation to the human activity associated with these objects. These pictures deliver a pictorial and psychological sense of emptiness and loneliness. The cinematic quality in his work seems stronger, especially suggesting a whimsical humor because of the unconventional setting of human presence and absence in his scenes.

The photographs Sternfeld took during his cross-country road trip became the body of work for his American Prospects, 1987, a manifestation of contemporary

American landscape and American psyche, as well as a reflection on the relationship between human and the environment.105 He wanted to develop a photographic genre that incorporated environment and nature derived from Street photography, which mostly records human activities in an urban landscape. Taken by the saturation of color in

Eggleston’s work, Sternfeld sought to use color images to advance fine-art photography.

Inspired by the detachment revealed in the New Topographics, such as the work of Robert

Adams and Lewis Baltz, Sternfeld was intrigued the intentional documentation of the suburbs and human intervention. Sternfeld then started to use an 8-by-10 camera to shoot

105 For his road trip during the first year, Sternfeld followed a course inspired by Edwin Way Teale’s books, such as Autumn across America and North with Spring. Initially disillusioned by the fact that the America of myth and legend had changed or disappeared, Sternfeld sought to reconcile himself to the new America he experienced. His understanding of America also was enriched through reading and inspired by Charles Reich, Lewis Mumford, Joshua C. Taylor, and Leo Marx. See Sally Eauclaire, The New Color Photography (New York: Abbeville Press, 1981), 273. 306

in color, and crisscrossed the country for his project.106 Similar to Shore’s Uncommon

Places, Sternfeld’s series aims to present thoughtful compositions with fine detail. More importantly, Sternfeld intended to provide a deliberate vista recalling the previous tradition of landscape photography even painting.

Anne W. Tucker pointed out that Sternfeld studied the climate, geology, vegetation, and economy of each region before he began this project. For some about regional lifestyle, Sternfeld read American literature. Starting in 1978, he periodically crisscrossed the country, usually on his own in a Volkswagen camper. While he documented the region’s indigenous characteristics, Sternfeld also indicated the sense of homogeneity of American life.107

Similar to his contemporaries, Eggleston and Shore, Sternfeld found beauty in common and sometimes atypical places. He also constantly explored the ordinary aspects of daily life, forcing his audience to pay attention to the scenes and details that habitually were overlooked. Tucker suggested that Sternfeld seemed to consciously avoid taking pictures of gas stations, store fronts, eateries, and motels, because he was very aware of

106 Kerry Brougher, “Corrupting Photography” in Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects (New York, NY: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2004).

107 Anne W. Tucker, “American Beauty in Atypical Places” in Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects. 307

the visual territory that already had been richly described by his predecessors such as

Evans, Frank, and Friedlander, and even his contemporaries, Eggleston and Shore.108

Sternfeld mined the potential black humor of the roadside, often related to the cinematic quality of the scene he encountered. Unlike the conventional roadside stand depicted by Evans and Shore, Sternfeld sought out the strange. Standing on his vehicle to present an elevated view, he juxtaposed two drastically different human activities in one vista. While some were putting out the fire in the background, a fireman was picking up perhaps stealing a pumpkin at the roadside stand in the foreground in McLean, Virginia,

December, 1978.109 [4-60]

Similarly, he coincidentally yet consciously documented the scene of a runaway elephant lying in the middle of the highway in his Exhausted Renegade Elephant,

Woodland, Washington, June 1979. [4-61] Sternfeld made his stance as an observer clear emphasizing the distance between the subject and the photographer, a position designed to encourage viewer identification, allowing the viewer’s participation and suggesting a cinematic quality. The image invites the viewer to speculate and complete the narrative

108 Ibid.

109 Eauclaire, The New Color Photography, 168. 308

before the incident on the scene. Sternfeld’s purposely constructed distant and sometimes elevated vista with vignettes contrasts to the snapshot style and aesthetic in Eggleston’s work and Shore’s earlier series American Surfaces. Resonating with Shore’s Uncommon

Places, Sternfeld’s work concentrates on the analytical view of an objective mood of representing a scene during a road trip, providing more details and information for the viewer. As the title of the series implies, American Prospects, Sternfeld’s work not only relates to an extensive view, looking from the distance, but also refers to a sense of anticipation, the act of looking forward.110

Indebted to what Eggleston and Shore already explored in color, but following

Shore’s choice of a large 8-by-10 view camera, Sternfeld produced magnificent fine quality color in his work. In McLean, Virginia, December, 1978, [4-60] the warm oranges and yellows of pumpkins, outfit of the firefighter, and even the fire itself create ironic visual rhythms that would not have been conveyed in black-and-white image. As in

Exhausted Renegade Elephant, Woodland, Washington, June, 1979, [4-61] although the majority of colors in the picture appear to be gray and earth tones, the picture catches the viewer’s attention through the white police car in the foreground. The viewer also

110 Anne W. Tucker, “American Beauty in Atypical Places” in Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects. 309

gradually can distinguish the nuance of grays from light to dark, and then discover the vignette of an elephant lying on the highway in the background. Color heightens the pictorial and cinematic quality of Sternfeld’s work, as well as his mise-en-scene mechanism and sense of humor.111

As Shore stated in The Nature of Photographs, a picture has a descriptive, mental, and physical level; color extends the palette of a picture and creates its new descriptive meaning.112 Sternfeld’s concentration on the palette in his McLean, Virginia,

December, 1978 [4-60] echoed of a similar interest that Shore had expressed earlier in his

American Surfaces. Shore highlighted the red of the milk box and the table in Amarillo,

Texas, July, 1972, [4-11] and he also was drawn to the juxtaposition of the white toilet and various tones of the wall, floor, and excretion in the toilet in Clinton, Oklahoma, July,

1972. [4-9]

Sternfeld reenacted the tradition of landscape painting in his photographic work, especially the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, in which the viewer could enjoy an overview from the distance and explore the imaginative world painted by the artist. In

111 Ibid.

112 Shore, The Nature of Photographs, 18. 310

that tradition, the landscape was the stage for human activities. In the same vein,

Sternfeld incorporated people, landscape, and narrative in his work in order to convey the status and significance of humans in the complicated world. He retraced and renewed the landscape representation with contemporary narratives.

As Bruegel and Jacob van Ruisdael presaged in paintings, Sternfeld brought macrocosm into microcosm in his work to examine the relationship between human and tamed and untamed nature.113 In McLean, Virginia, December, 1978, [4-60] Sternfeld presented a paradoxical scene: a fireman picking pumpkins instead of putting out the fire.

Different from Shore’s roadside landscape, Sternfeld’s image describes a surreal and absurd relationship between human and the environment.

Sternfeld’s dysfunctional landscape might have implied the failure of the

American dream and social norm or the destruction of America, as his panoramic vistas often suggested the mentality of the contemporary culture with a noir side.114 [4-60–4-62]

Inspired by the New Topographics, Sternfeld carried on the search for America as

113 Brougher, “Corrupting Photography” in Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects.

114 Ibid. Images relate to the noir side of Sternfeld’s work include a firefighter’s negligence of fulfilling his duty or an elephant’s escape in vain. Brougher stated that several filmmakers have profited from Sternfeld’s photography of the late 1970s and early 1980s. For example, David Byrne’s True Stories, 1986; Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin’s Suicide, 1999; David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, 1986 and Wild at Heart, 1990; Same Mendes’s American Beauty, 1999; and Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas, 1984, among others, share the false utopian image of America’s rural landscape and suburban life. More overtly than Sternfeld’s photography, these movies evoke the tension and conflict of the American dream. 311

revealed in the man-altered landscape, a contrast from the nature intact from the nation’s past. He deliberately documented the aftermath of natural disaster in After a Flash Flood,

Rancho Mirage, California, July 1979, [4-62] revealing his concern about the current state of our environment, human and nature are both threatened by each other. These residences in the countryside are juxtaposed with a violent scene on lower half, a car falling into the devastation of landslide. Sternfeld translated the environmentalist message of the terrifying power of nature—humans engulfed and overwhelmed by nature, as also was shown in paintings by J.M.W. Turner and Caspar David Friedrich.115

As Robert Adams depicted the land development in the Rockies area of New

West, Sternfeld photographed a suburban residential area in his Pendleton, Oregon, June

1980. [4-63] He intentionally represented the vista from an elevated position so that houses became miniatures in the picture, revealing a sense of isolation like an enclosed settlement. His compositional and aesthetic choice might also be reminiscent of

O’Sullivan’s vista, allowing significant distance between the subject and the photographer. [4-28] Through his use of color, Sternfeld also showcased the chromatic

115 For example, in Turner’s Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps, 1812, humans are engulfed by the overarching dark storm cloud as well as the threatening white avalanche, so are in several other Turner’s seascape paintings. Another example, in Friedrich’s The Abbey in the Oakwood, 1809–10, the miniscule figures also are overwhelmed by the nature of divine creation, juxtaposed with ruins and forlorn trees with implications of decay and death. 312

tension: grasses, skies, and mountains appear dressed in the same colors as the painted tract houses, automobiles, and clothes of the inhabitants in the landscape.116

In a similar setting, offering a close-up of the backyard of such a suburban neighborhood, Sternfeld recorded where children played with their toy cars and dump trucks on a small mound in Buckingham, Pennsylvania, August, 1978. [4-64] Sternfeld described a fable that children emulated what adults did, and vice versa, offering a surreal juxtaposition of large and small. They intervened in the environment through housing construction and land development, as the vignette on the mound juxtaposed by the row of houses in the background illustrates, offering an intentional scale of ambiguity. He stated that landscape was a description of human activities. As Tucker noted, Sternfeld suggested that humans should be the caretakers of the environment. Nevertheless, the human in contemporary society could be a “preserver, decorator, transient, controller, spoiler, and imitator.”117 Sternfeld reflected on the anxious relation to nature through a series of images whose coloration mimics both the tensions and the consistencies

116 Moore, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970–1980, 34.

117 Tucker, “American Beauty in Atypical Places” in Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects. 313

occurring between the nature and the man-made in America.118

Sternfeld represented his objective view, but his work seems not as detached as the pictures by the New Topographics photographers. His work invites the viewer to wander in the scene, reasoning and interpreting the view he presented. For Sternfeld, the world in his picture was about the perceptual issues more than conceptual ones. Through his cross-country road trip, Sternfeld contemplated the dialectical relationship between human and the environment through the dysfunctional landscape of a dystopic America.

Conclusion

Shore and the New Topographics photographers offered a somewhat dystopic view of an America in metamorphosis.119 Although many artists have adopted similar attitude in their photographic road trips, each was slightly different in terms of artistic intention and photographic approach, resulting in nuanced aesthetic significance. Robert

Adams and several other New Topographics photographers reflected on pressing issues of the connection and disconnection between the Old West and the new one—the landscape encountered by Americans in the past and in the present—especially for the newly

118 Moore, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970–1980, 34.

119 Lisa Phillips, The American Century: Art & Culture, 1950–2000 (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1999), 270-273. 314

developed suburbs and rural areas. Robert Adams adhered to black-and-white, and the monochromatic quality resonated with the tradition of landscape photography of depicting the West in the 19th century.

Robert Adams, Shore, and other New Topographics photographers shared an interest in depicting the contemporary American landscape changed by human activity.

Such human intervention in the environment could often be traced to the presence of the automobile and attendant highway culture, which spurred mobile home communities, and new residential areas in the suburbs, among others.

While, for some, color photographs still seemed to be vulgar, vernacular, and commercial for mainstream fine-art photography, Eggleston and Shore crashed the gate.

Since these photographers along with baby boomers and the younger generation of

Americans already accustomed to color TV, color movies, and color magazines, color photographs felt more connected to visual reality itself and the conditioned viewers to accept the artistic value of color photographs by Eggleston and Shore.120 Both photographers shifted to color in the late 1960s, and Shore still used a 35 mm camera

120 Weski, “Draft of a Presentation” in William Eggleston: Los Alamos. Shore was born in 1947, Robert Adams was born in 1937, Eggleston was born in 1939, and Sternfeld was born in 1944. Color television was first introduced in the United States in early 1950s, and gradually transitioned from black-and-white to color until 1974. 315

until he began photographing for Uncommon Places. Eggleston and Shore (with his

American Surfaces) carried on the spontaneity and snapshot style that Frank and

Friedlander previously had explored in their road trip photographs, except that Eggleston and Shore photographed in color.

Although Eggleston was mainly based in the South and his only true road trip was across the Southwest to California, his work resonates with Shore’s pictures in depicting the common life and vernacular landscape of the automobile and highway culture. Shore’s work engages with the tradition of picturing America on the road more actively, indebted to Evans’s formalist tradition and Frank’s attempt to understand

America through a cross-country road trip. Shore took painstakingly detailed pictures that encapsulated the time through images of cars, signs, architecture, as well as other facets of American culture.121

Weski detected a “democratic camera” in Eggleston’s work, treating every subject and object equally with considerable attention and depiction, without any hierarchy between high and low as in the long history of painting. Weski’s assertion also is true when describing Shore’s work, especially in the Warholian legacy of some of his

121 Philip Gefter, Photography after Frank (New York: Aperture, 2009), 73. 316

images. Both Eggleston and Shore consistently were drawn to the banal and trivial in ordinary life.122 Both were eager to advance fine-art photography with color, manifesting the patterns of random facts in their documentation of the vernacular landscape.123

Eggleston’s photographs are not simply autobiographical or journalistic. Like

Warhol, in some ways, Eggleston often related to his subjects as both an insider and an outsider.124 Eggleston also resisted to the idea of reading content into his pictures, saying

“There is no particular reason to search for meaning.”125 On one level, this may be true because his picture is a mixture of cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes printed on paper.

However, tracing what Eggleston chose to depict is inevitable because the search makes

122 According to Thomas Weski, Eggleston discussed the idea of “democratic camera” constantly. See the essay by Thomas Weski in The Hasselblad Award 1998: William Eggleston (G teborg, Sweden: Hasselblad Center; New York City: Distributed in North America by D.A.P, 1999). Around the time Eggleston had his first solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1976, he was introduced to Andy Warhol, whereas Shore had been a regular photographer in Warhol’s studio from 1965 to 1967. Also, see Christopher Brayshaw in his correspondence with Shore in 2006, Brayshaw uses “democracy of attention” in discussing Shore’s work, accessed August 25, 2014. http://www.doppelgangermagazine.com/march/chris_brayshaw_march.html.

123 Phillips, The American Century: Art & Culture, 1950–2000, 270. Charlotte Cotton also noted that although the use of color photography has dominated since the mid-1990s, it was not until the 1970s that art photographers who used vibrant color found a modest degree of critical support. Most prominent among the many twentieth-century photographers who contributed to this shift were Eggleston and Shore. See Charlotte Cotton, The Photograph as Contemporary Art (London: Thames & Hudson, 2014, 2004), 13.

124 Donna De Salvo, “Every Picture,” in William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961–2008 by Elisabeth Sussman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 255. Taken in places around the South where he lives, or on trips often taken with friends, Eggleston’s photographs are products of experience, which demonstrate a direct connection between Eggleston and his subjects, such as friends, relatives, and places.

125 Eggleston’s response seems reminiscent of Warhol’s remarks on looking at the surface of his work. Ibid. 317

the viewer human. Therefore, his photographs may contain multiple, individual narratives, which make them democratic.126

As to Sternfeld, his work might be seen as a synthetic culmination of various photographic styles of the 1970s, incorporating the humor and social landscape derived from street photography with the detached restraint New Topographics photographs and pronounced formalism of colorists such as Shore and Eggleston.127 The analytical view, the cinematic quality, and the suggestive narrative in his work also presage or parallel the work of others, such as Gregory Crewdson, Rineke Dijkstra, Andreas Gursky, Thomas

Ruff, Thomas Struth, and Jeff Wall, promoting a new type of photography to displace painting. Energized by the immense size, luminosity, color, details, and narrative intent in his work, Sternfeld’s American Prospects introduced a vital form to photography and moved the medium forward.128

Shore and the Bechers exchanged photographs with each other when they met

126 Ibid.

127 Moore, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970–1980, 34.

128 Brougher, “Corrupting Photography” in Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects. See also James Crump, in “Post-Chromatic Shock: Contemporary Art Photography After 1980,” in Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970–1980 by Kevin Moore, 42–48. According to Moore, Shore and Eggleston were presumably the two most representative figures in establishing the syntax of color photography in early 1970s, while Sternfeld synthesized various movements of the 1970s in his work, including color and the New Topographics. In his essay, Crump also uses photographs by Dijkstra, Gursky, and Wall to reintroduce the contemporary art photography in color after 1980. 318

for the New Topographics. The Bechers also introduced Shore’s work to their students at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, including Gursky, Ruff, and Struth. As a result, the Bechers instructed their students through works by one of the prominent photographers at the times, the only New Topographics artist who photographed in color.129

Although Sternfeld was more interested in debating the relationship between human and the environment, his emulation of Shore’s choice of a large format camera and shooting in color should not be overlooked. Sternfeld was aware that his predecessors and contemporaries already had explored the road, photographing on their own journeys, and he chose to focus on a dystopic America that he had observed, rather than providing conventional perspectives on the roadside landscape, such as empty highways, gas stations, or motels. This placed Shore more obviously in line with Evans and Frank.

Shore’s images of an automobile Grand Tour across America also should be contextualized in the Cold War era, especially for their ideological implications. In Tom

Clancy’s 1984 novel and the 1990 movie adaptation of The Hunt for Red October, a group of Soviet naval officers, led by captain Marko Ramius, wanted to defect to the

129 See “His Pictures Have the Quality of the First Encounter” in Stephen Shore: Photographs 1973–1993, 32. Another minor source of influence may have included Sally Eauclaire’s The New Color Photography, 1981, a reference book to Gursky at that time, in which contained works by Shore, Eggleston, and Sternfeld. Eauclaire’s The New Color Photography is accompanied by an exhibition held at the International Center of Photography in New York in 1981, introducing some 50 New Colorists. 319

United States with their state-of-the-art nuclear ballistic missile submarine. In the movie, captain Ramius and his captain of the second rank Vasily Borodin had the following conversation about their imagination of life in America in the future.

Captain Borodin: I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck…maybe even a “recreational vehicle.” And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that? Captain Ramius: I suppose. Captain Borodin: No papers? Captain Ramius: No papers, state to state. Captain Borodin: Well then, in winter I will live in…Arizona. Actually, I think I will need two wives. Captain Ramius: Oh, at least.130

Regardless of the drastically different context, Clancy’s storyline portrays a

Soviet officer’s fascination with the vehicular freedom to go from state to state in

America without any government interference or surveillance, a stark contrast to the actual situation of traveling via car in the Soviet territories for Soviet nationals. Shore’s last image in Uncommon Places, a vernacular view of an ordinary neighborhood in

Montana with a pickup truck and two campers, [4-44] along with other photographs taken during his cross-country road trip, corroborate and celebrate the truth and reality of

130 For the quotes, accessed December 9, 2016, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099810/quotes 320

American individualism, freedom, and democracy.

Shore recounts that he usually wore a safari jacket that he had bought from

Abercrombie and Fitch during his road trip, as if he actually was going on safari and exploring the world.131 While Shore thoughtfully used Room 125, Westbank Motel Idaho

Falls, Idaho, July 18, 1973 [4-21] to introduce his travelogue in Uncommon Places, he unsurprisingly arranged Bozeman, Montana, 1981 to be the last image to conclude his journey as if returning home. [4-44]

French philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard took a road trip across

America in the 1980s and published his travelogue America in 1986. Baudrillard noted that “The point is not to write the sociology or psychology of the car, the point is to drive.

That way you learn more about this society than all academia could ever tell you.”132

Baudrillard’s claim also resonates with one of the popular songs of the road, Willie

Nelson’s On the Road Again, 1980, in which the lyric reads: “I can’t wait to get on the road again. On the road again. Goin’ places that I’ve never been. Seein’ things that I may

131 Shore mentioned this anecdote again at the artist talk at the opening for the exhibition The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas on February 26, 2016.

132 Jean Baudriallard, America (New York: Verso, 1988), 54. 321

never see again.”133 Shore’s documentation of the automobile Grand Tour—his road trip across America—therefore intersected with many aspects of the American way of life and travel. His work is the visualization of the profane popular culture and tourism, as well as the profound philosophical quest for America.

133 See full lyrics of On the Road Again, accessed December 21, 2016, https://play.google.com/music/preview/Tyyqcos3ieol7ttatte5clyjw4i?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_ medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-songlyrics 322

CHAPTER 5

DRIVE, LOOK, AND PHOTOGRAPH: ROADSCAPES SINCE 1990

The experience of driving and being on the road continues to carry symbolic weight in American culture and provides a means to comment about American life and landscape. In contextualizing the contemporary photographic production in visual culture about driving and the road, one of the significant markers is Wim Wenders’s 1984 road movie, Paris, Texas. The movie provided numerous relevant scenes and the barren, sublime, and vernacular landscape of the American West between Los Angeles and Texas.

Having grown up in West Germany, Wenders developed his fascination about

America, particularly the American West, watching many Western movies depicting the

Old West. Before the production of Paris, Texas, he also spent three months traveling in the American Southwest for preliminary location scouting and his own photographic work. As discussed in Chapter 4, Wenders represented some iconic visual qualities in his photographic work of depicting the vernacular scene. His work not only embodies the correspondence between the still and moving imagery of documenting the road experience, but also functions as a transition between such visual representations in the 323

1980s and the 1990s onwards. Examining Wenders’s work is instrumental in reconsidering each road photograph as a still of the road movie, a fragment of the whole trip or journey.

In Paris, Texas, one of the scenes depicts the protagonist, the estranged father

Travis Henderson, played by Harry Dean Stanton, having snacks on the roadside with his son Hunter on a pick-up truck surrounded by the curving overpasses of the freeways in

Los Angeles. [5-1] The overarching modern freeways resemble the wonders of civil engineering as if they were Roman aqueducts, as the freeways certainly function as an iconic visual reference to the non-urban landscape in Los Angeles.1

Constantly being inspired and amazed by the American sublime and automobility, it is noteworthy that, in the movie, Walt, Travis’s brother, is depicted as a roadside billboard salesman in Los Angeles. When Walt drove to Texas to get his brother,

Wenders represented the American road experience, including empty highways as well as stops at gas stations, diners, and intersections. Wenders also visualized the driving experience itself from various perspectives, such as the frontal shot of the driver and

1 Wenders intended to show Los Angeles as an enormous suburb rather than a city. See Wim Wenders, “Like Flying Blind without Instruments: On the Turning Point in Paris, Texas” in Logic of Images: Essays and Conversations (London: Faber, 1992), 66. 324

passenger through the windshield, the viewpoint from the back passenger seat illustrating the driver or the image of the driver reflected in the rearview mirror, and the landscape of the road through the windshield. Such representation stresses the fact that the cinematographer and the viewer is traveling on the road with the protagonist of the movie.2 [5-2]

With earlier photographic and cinematic practices paving the way, artists continued to revive and renew this photographic tradition of picturing America on the road as a legitimate and autonomous visual form in Contemporary Art from various perspectives. This chapter aims to provide an overview of photographic representations of how artists rethought driving and roadscapes from 1990 to the present through examples such as Catherine Opie’s Freeways, 1994–1995, Andrew Bush’s Vector

Portraits, 1989–1997, Martha Rosler’s Rights of Passage, 1997, Lee Friedlander’s

America by Car, 2010, and Amy Stein’s Stranded, 2010.3

Drawn from commuting and traffic on the freeways, Opie’s series of

2 Wenders also noted that a lot of his films started off with roadmaps instead of scripts. Ibid., 67.

3 Although some of Friedlander’s earlier photographs from the 1960s and the early 1970s are discussed in Chapter 3, mixing Walker Evans’s formalist style and Robert Frank’s snapshot aesthetic, this chapter concentrates on the photo-book America by Car, 2010, a series he dedicated to his idiosyncratic style of photographing from the inside seat of the car. 325

photographs provides eerie, sublime, yet nostalgic views of enormous freeways in small panoramic platinum prints that structure the life and landscape of Los Angeles. As freeways were spectacles, ruins, and monuments for Opie, Bush turned his focus on the drivers in and around Los Angeles, providing the complete portrait of a driving society.

Bush’s series raises the concern of the private room in public space as the artist photographed a person’s car next to his on the freeway. In the meantime, the series not only recalls the sense of anonymity of Walker Evans’s portraits of subway passengers taken by a hidden camera, but also Ed Ruscha’s Conceptualist and scientific approach in the 1960s.

Shifting from the West Coast to the East, Rosler sought to rethink the metaphor of the American road as a promise of all good things. Driving in the New York

Metropolitan area, she constantly encountered traffic, constructions, detours, and a plethora of visual information from signs and billboards, as well as messages of consumption and the transportation of goods delivered by trucks. In small panoramic color prints, shot from the inside of the car, her photographs present alienation and sometimes the ironic situation of driving in and out of a modern city.

As Opie, Bush, and Rosler documented the driving and the roadscapes of a 326

particular region, Friedlander and Stein photographed road scenes during their cross-country road trips. Continuing to crisscross the country extensively starting from the late 1990s, Friedlander created a series of photographs that incorporated the driving vision from the inside seat of a car. The photographs correlate the common visual experience of being on the road and the cinematography in road movies.

While Friedlander carried on the tradition of exploring the world on the road particularly established by Evans and Robert Frank, Stein revived this tradition in a fashion more closely related to Dorothea Lange’s legacy, documenting others and the hardship of traveling on the road. Stein’s series reflects on the state of being stuck and left behind on the road, which literally and metaphorically refers to a journey interrupted, or even a failure of freedom and happiness.

Works by these artists—Opie, Bush, Rosler, Friedlander, and Stein—embody yet complicate the driving experience and the roadscapes with various issues concerning modern life and contemporary society intertwined with automobility. These series also demonstrate that road photography is a complex and ongoing interaction of observation, imagination, and intention. 327

Landscape Photography of Los Angeles Style: Catherine Opie’s Freeways4

Since one of Catherine Opie’s undergraduate teachers at the San Francisco Art

Institute, Henry Wessel Jr., was featured in the seminal 1975 exhibition New

Topographics, (see Chapter 4) Opie developed respect for the craft of documentary photography. Unlike the New Topographics photographers, Opie’s urban landscapes deliver a stronger sense of melancholy rather than irony.5 Her work seems to translate the mentality and quality of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photographs of industrial sites in

Germany and parts of Europe. Part of the Bechers’ work concept involved historic preservation, in which their documentation of industrial architecture was an attempt to create both a visual record and an argument to save it.6 Departing from the New

4 Although Opie is more famous for her portraits and self-portraits in the late 1980s and early 1990s, oftentimes showing contemporary concerns about lesbian and queer identity, she already expressed the interest in picturing the landscape since her early career. After graduating with a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1986, Opie moved to Valencia in Southern California to enroll in the MFA program in photography at California Institute for the Arts (CalArts). Over the course of two years at CalArts, she shot more than 200 photographs of the Valencia suburbs, which later became her thesis project Master Plan. The project owes the influence of Constructivism along with art and writings of several Conceptual photographers in the 1970s and 1980s, such as Victor Burgin, Martha Rosler, and Allan Sekula (with whom Opie studied with at CalArts). The photographic aesthetic and subject matter were inspired by the documentary tradition exemplified by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. In 1994, when she became a technician and began to commute between Los Angeles and Irvine, the experience as a regular commuter using the freeway rekindled her interest in suburbia and the landscape. See Jennifer Blessing, Catherine Opie: American Photographer (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2008), 32–33, 42–43, 52–53, 72–73, 82–83.

5 Blessing, Catherine Opie: American Photographer, 20.

6 Ibid., 19–20. Although New Topographics included the only non-American photographers, Bernd and Hilla Becher from West Germany, they were represented by depictions of American industrial subjects rather than German ones. 328

Topographics tradition, however, Opie’s is not the “passive frame” but a more active attempt to impose an insistent viewpoint on a scene. In creating architectural portraits, she tends to focus on a central structure and create an icon or object of veneration.7 Opie stated that the main influence in her work was documentary practice. She sought to engage the tradition, documenting a community or looking at the world, not only from the outside but the inside. That is where she implements more conceptual motifs into the work.8

Opie was a technician in the photo lab at the University of California, Irvine, and she had to commute to work from her home in Los Angeles. While spending long hours on freeways, they became personal to Opie. She was always stuck in traffic, and started looking at the structures rather than the cars in front of her. In traveling the freeways, she started to think of them as structures that would be left behind as if they were Los

Angeles’s monuments.9

As a regular commuter using the freeway, she conceived of her project Freeways

7 Ibid., 21.

8 Colette Dartnall, “Interview with Catherine Opie, July 11, 1997,” in Catherine Opie, (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997), unpaginated.

9 Ibid. 329

based on this ordinary visual and physical experience, focusing solely on freeways as icons of Southern California.10 Opie claimed:

The freeways separate communities, but I would say that the biggest thing they do is separate the city from the suburb. They change the way people look at the city and the way master-planned communities have been built, popping up on the city’s outskirts.11

Therefore, Opie aimed to provide a visual language for understanding her subject, in which politics and formal rigor were intertwined closely in the structures of the freeways.

This sort of cataloguing of Los Angeles architecture and landscape also is reminiscent of

Ruscha’s earlier more Conceptualist photographic practices, as evidenced in his

Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962 and Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966, among others.12 (See Chapter 3)

After her Freeways, 1994–1995, Opie published two more series, Houses,

1995–1996 and Mini-malls, 1997–1998, which completed a loose trilogy of series about

10 Jennifer Blessing, Catherine Opie: American Photographer (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2008), 82.

11 Colette Dartnall, “Interview with Catherine Opie, July 11, 1997,” in Catherine Opie, (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997), unpaginated.

12 Jennifer Blessing, Catherine Opie: American Photographer, 19. 330

Los Angeles architecture and landscape.13 About this trilogy, Opie stated:

The Houses, Freeways, and Mini-malls are structures which one would have a hard time seeing as beautiful or even take the time to look at closely. I create an interesting contradiction by giving these functional objects, which are often seen as obtrusive and ugly, an aesthetic quality in this case to make people look at what they may otherwise look past but also to make them rethink their pre-conceived notions.14

Although Opie stated that Freeways and Mini-malls primarily are about function rather than aesthetics, especially for Los Angeles, they consequently led to the physical and cultural landscape in Los Angeles as part of the unique aesthetic experience.15 Opie’s representations echo the artistic concern of the New Topographics, paying attention to the banal subjects in ordinary life and vernacular landscape. Her work also reiterates the legacy of Ruscha and other Los Angeles based artists, as their works are significantly inspired by the visual, physical, and spatial experience of Southern California—related to driving.

Unlike her previous series which had used color photographs, such as Portraits,

13 Ibid., 100.

14 Colette Dartnall, “Interview with Catherine Opie, July 11, 1997,” in Catherine Opie (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997), unpaginated.

15 Ibid. 331

1993–1997, the Freeways employed a panoramic camera, producing negatives that she developed as small contact prints in the rich monochrome of the platinum process. For the some 40 images she took for the series, Opie concentrated on the abstract pictorial aspects of her subject, which she photographed early on weekend mornings at dawn in order to more easily exclude people and automobiles from the compositions. By attempting to empty the freeways, Opie stripped them of their functionality in order to provide a rare view of the structures themselves, highlighting their systemic organization.

This elimination of human presence later became common in Opie’s representations of architecture and urban landscape.16

Due to both the stylistic and material aspects, especially the archaic monochromatic platinum prints, Opie’s Freeways reads like a quiet, even mournful, meditation on the dubious success of a system that was conceived as a means of connecting suburban and urban areas.17

Opie has compared her Freeways with Maxime Du Camp’s pictures of the

16 Ibid., 82–83. She also had worked in the panoramic format before, for A Long Way from Paris: Photographs from Mac-Arthur Park, Metro Rail, and Their Surroundings, 1989–1990, and Mystery Date, 1990.

17 Ibid., 83. 332

Egyptian pyramids published in 1852.18 Similar to the pyramids, highways have an inherent grandeur and stateliness because of their scale; Opie often photographed from a terrestrial position to emphasize the aerial arrangements overhead. The lack of human presence in Opie’s recalls Du Camp’s photographs that eerily illustrated monuments of a glorious lost civilization haunted by its departed inhabitants.19 Therefore, the conceptual motif of emptying out the human physical presence is designed to emphasize the decay, the sense of loss, and the nostalgia for another era.

Opie noted: “I like it empty. There are just too many people here. I think it is quite amazing to do a body of work in which you take the people out, and that you are actually able to do that in L.A.”20 For Opie, freeways provided one of the specific features of identifying Los Angeles, how this city functions and the way it was built.21

Departing from her earlier work, Freeways involves a more private and solitary investigation due to the working process. Opie’s images translate a state of peculiar

18 Ibid., 18, 83. See original quote, Maura Reilly, “The Drive to Describe: An Interview with Catherine Opie,” Art Journal 60, no. 2 (summer 2001), 90–91. For Du Camp’s work, see Maxime Du Camp, Egypte, Nubie, Palestine, Syrie (Paris: Gide et J. Baudry, 1852)

19 Jennifer Blessing, Catherine Opie: American Photographer, 18.

20 Colette Dartnall, “Interview with Catherine Opie, July 11, 1997,” in Catherine Opie (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997), unpaginated.

21 Ibid. 333

solitude. She positioned herself as an explorer and recorder of her surroundings.22

As Jennifer Blessing argues, like Romantic ruins, the series provides a meditation on mortality and the passage of time. Opie photographed overpasses and highways around Los Angeles in the aftermath of the devastating Northridge Earthquake, which took place in the early morning of January 17, 1994; the absence of figures suggests a post-apocalyptic landscape. The absence of humans also recalls the long exposure time in early photography that often captured ghostly figures and objects unless they stayed immobile for a considerable duration of time. Hence the stillness of the

Freeways, their small size (2 1/4 x 6 3/4 inches), and the platinum printing process all create additional layer of pathos, connecting Opie’s contemporary subject with an obsolete past.23 [5-3] Opie’s Freeways has a kind of archaeological element as if the viewer is looking at post-apocalyptic freeways or a relic. They are devoid of people or any signs of humanity, but they also suggest human intervention in the landscape through highway construction.24

22 Elizabeth A.T. Smith, “Catherine Opie’s Los Angeles Topographies,” in Catherine Opie (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997), unpaginated.

23 Jennifer Blessing, Catherine Opie: American Photographer, 18.

24 Maura Reilly, “The Drive to Describe: An Interview with Catherine Opie,” Art Journal 60, no. 2 (summer 2001), 91–92. 334

Even in small format, Opie’s Freeways series suffices on pictorial and aesthetic levels. A freeway is huge, but the photographs are scaled down so that the viewer has to look at them closely to explore the details. Opie’s prints create an unusual intimacy with the vast structure of the freeways.25 Shot from various perspectives, the curving shapes of the freeways in Opie’s series loom large despite the small format of the images. The tones of these platinum prints evoke the photography of an earlier period, enhancing the hushed and distilled quality of the images.26

In conversation with Du Camp’s pyramid photographs, Opie also revives the tradition of picturing the American West, as she noted: “The Freeways are really about how I perceive the Western landscape today. It was all about this kind of expanse.”27

Opie also was inspired by the lesser-known panoramas made by Timothy O’Sullivan, and consequently chose a banquet camera to make long panoramas as had been used in the landscape photography of the West in the past.28

25 Colette Dartnall, “Interview with Catherine Opie, July 11, 1997,” in Catherine Opie (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997), unpaginated.

26 Elizabeth A.T. Smith, “Catherine Opie’s Los Angeles Topographies,” in Catherine Opie (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997), unpaginated.

27 Maura Reilly, “The Drive to Describe: An Interview with Catherine Opie,” Art Journal 60, no. 2 (summer 2001), 92.

28 Ibid. 335

Shot on weekend mornings, several of Opie’s images show her intrusion into the construction or road closure areas, documenting the behind-the-scenes of highway construction. [5-4] Unlike Du Camp’s pyramid photographs, Opie provided a glimpse of how these freeways, one of the wonders in Los Angeles as well as in America, were built, including the subjects of heavy machinery, unpaved freeways, unconnected overpass, constructing materials, and seemingly abandoned corners. As Opie stated, she wanted to offer the commentary both from outside and inside. Her reworking of the conventions of photographic traditions demonstrates her unique sensibility and attention to common, but sometimes overlooked or underrepresented, aspects of life and landscape in Los

Angeles—a city heavily embedded with automobility, driving, and freeways.29

Complete Portrait of a Driving Society: Andrew Bush’s Vector Portraits

As Opie’s Freeways illustrated the American landscape photography of Los

Angeles-style, Andrew Bush’s Vector Portraits presents portraits of motorists driving next to the artist’s car mostly in and around Los Angeles.30 Bush’s series is reminiscent

29 Elizabeth A.T. Smith, “Catherine Opie’s Los Angeles Topographies,” in Catherine Opie (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997), unpaginated.

30 Maura Reilly, “The Drive to Describe: An Interview with Catherine Opie,” Art Journal 60, no. 2 (summer 2001), 83. Following her Freeways, Opie continued this mode of American landscape photography in Mini-malls, 1997–1998. The photographs in Bush’s series were taken between 1989 and 1997; these later were included in the book called Andrew Bush: Drive. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008) 336

of Evans’s subway series, published in Many Are Called, 1938–1941. For those images,

Evans used a 35mm camera carefully hidden in the folds of his winter coat and stealthily photographed the subway passengers without their knowledge. The debate about the private and public space, as well as the anonymous aspect in Bush’s series echoes the one in Evans’s series.31 Bush’s series portraying drivers also resonates with Ruscha’s

Conceptualist and scientific approach of mapping the Los Angeles landscape while driving, as shown in Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966.

Bush stated: “That’s what Los Angeles is. Drivers seem to be in a private room on wheels.”32 Bush series documents the private rooms in a public space—freeways in most cases. After removing the front passenger seat and mounting a medium format roll-film camera with a flashlight on a tripod weighted down with sandbags, Bush began driving through the city.33 He drove all over the city until there was no light left in the day. For him, that was the beauty of drive, look, and photograph.34 The picture frame—the edges of the picture—was close to what Bush was seeing while looking out

31 Jeff Rosenheim, “The Open Road” in Andrew Bush: Drive (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 135.

32 Ibid., 133.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid., 134. 337

the front passenger-side window during the drive. Therefore, Bush also became a flâneur or a wanderer in the city—driving and portraying drivers—framing the world through his window.

In order to capture a clear image of the driver, Bush had to drive nearly at the same speed as the driver next to his car. There is an ambiguity between being still and moving. [5-5] The subject usually is clear while the blurry landscape in the background shows the motion. The physical act of driving at such a high speed, and so close to another car, also prevents people as drivers from spending too much time carefully observing others. Regardless the photographs are taken in public space, mostly on the freeway; Bush’s series also complicates the notion of visually intruding or being invited into other’s private space.35

Since 1992, Bush was interested in creating an exhibition venue outside of the gallery system, and his series had been shown in the Department of Motor Vehicles

(DMV) in Hollywood. Bush wanted to reach the general public, especially the driving public, and the DMV was fitting because it is the place where people go to get their driving identity. Bush also was interested in addressing the issue of people’s paranoid

35 Ibid., 135. 338

suspicions of being under state surveillance, even before 9/11 happened.36

While Bush’s series was on view at the DMV, a woman working for a lawyer came to register her car, and saw she was the subject of one of the photographs. Bush did not list his name but only the titles of the photographs. He subsequently received a letter forwarded by the DMV stating that the photograph and its title implied that she was breaking the law, which indicated that she was traveling at 68 mph while the speed limit was 65 mph at that time. She claimed she looked down at her speedometer and remembered going under the speed limit when she mistook the flash of Bush’s camera for the flashing lights of a police car.37

The use of flash created the shadows inside the car while also producing the reflection of the metal surfaces seen when the sun hit the side of car.38 It also creates the illusion that Bush might be a paparazzo. Bush explained that other drivers who witnessed his picture taking might have wondered who was the subject being photographed, and perhaps the driver was a celebrity.39

36 Ibid., 136.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid., 137.

39 Ibid., 138. 339

As the project progressed, Bush became more selective and sought to find subjects for a broader and more complete portrait of a driving society. The series still provides an authentic look at Los Angeles because if Bush would have traveled to other parts of the country or to different countries, the roads, car designs, traffic regulations, and ideas about public and private space would have varied.40

Bush’s series touches upon the notion that “you are what you drive.” Bush assumed that most of the drivers in his pictures owned their cars and were traveling to or from work. Among the photographs included in the series, most of the cars were private sedans except for a food truck. Some of the drivers kept their eyes on the road, and others turned to Bush’s camera perhaps due to the flash. Although the truck caught Bush’s attention, it belonged to a different project because Bush would have had to drive a higher vehicle. More importantly, the photographs of truck drivers would not offer a view into the personal space of a driver in his or her own car, which was Bush’s central focus for the project. Bush’s series further invites the viewer to find clues and to relate to the identity and relationship of the car and its driver.41 While driving next to another car at

40 Ibid., 134–135.

41 Ibid., 135. 340

close range and at the same speed for a few seconds, Bush’s practice created an imagined intimacy.42

Within the context of road photography as a genre study, Bush’s photographs also are reminiscent of Robert Frank’s portraits of motorists in The Americans, such as

Belle Isle, Detroit, 1955 and Detroit, 1955. [2-23, 24] In The Americans, especially considering that these two images are arranged next to each other, Frank suggested that cars might be symbols of social status as well as vehicles for a comfortable and convenient life for every American, African-American and Caucasian, young and old. In a similar way, Bush’s body of work also captured a diverse glimpse of the driving society in terms of the age, race, ethnicity, and even personality of the driver, as well as the make, model, and condition of their cars.

For example, Bush photographed two subjects driving yellow cars. He portrayed the different characteristics of the drivers and their cars. In one, a Hispanic man was caught directly but suspiciously staring at the camera, perhaps due to the flash and the photographic apparatus. He drove a beat-up Buick, while a swash of black paint on the driver’s door with the word “AIRPORT” still visible, suggesting the history of the car,

42 Ibid., 136. 341

and perhaps the driver, too. In contrast, a Caucasian man, with a baseball cap, mustache, sunglasses, and tattoos on his arm, drove his clean and macho sports car Chevrolet

Camaro. He appeared undeterred and only focused on the road ahead of him. [5-6, 7]

Between Escape and Arrival: Martha Rosler’s Rights of Passage

Unlike Bush’s driving and portraying drivers in Los Angeles, Martha Rosler’s

Rights of Passage, 1997, represents the actual situation and state of mind of driving in the

New York metropolitan area—anxiety and alienation in the modern society. Rosler’s work challenges the collective imagery of the promise and precondition for possession of

“all good things” associated with the American road. Born in 1943, Rosler was particularly familiar with the history of the highway system closed that was substantially developed in the late 1950s for economic, political, and military necessities. The interstate system created a vast web across the continent, setting postwar America into motion, inventing new locations, new businesses, new tracts of homes, and a new universe, which reshaped the American life and landscape.43

The dreams of escape and possession, however, are foreclosed by the advancing sameness of the landscape provided by such a road system, especially the interstate

43 Martha Rosler, “Road Work” in Rights of Passage (Kortrijk: Catalogue Project, 1997), 15 342

highway. Rosler also noted, in a way, that the American road had its predecessor in the

Romans who also dreamed and built a system of roads connecting the distant lands of their Empire. The mirage of liberation demolished place and time in favor of space. The constant renewal of glossy images echoes the stolid work of construction, and these became the orb and the scepter of the nation.44

As Anthony Vidler noted, with the extension of the Federal highway network and construction of the Interstate Highway system in the 1950s in America, the highway served both as means of escape and arrival. On the one hand, it was an escape from the postwar mundanity of suburbia, family values, and domestic life. On the other, it was for the arrival at exotic and sometimes forbidden sites and sights of the park-strewn, vista-filled, National Geographic-framed continent.45

Vidler further stated that in Rosler’s series, however, the freedom of movement, real or conceptual, usually was confined and blocked by traffic, by construction, deteriorating road surfaces and margins, and by the inexorable sameness of the modern

44 Ibid.

45 Anthony Vidler, “Construction Ahead” in Rights of Passage, 21. 343

highway landscape.46 The themes and subjects in Rosler’s series—temporary land dividers, highway signs, billboards, bridges and tunnels, and trailers—all disrupt the sense of location and mobility. The viewer has difficulties distinguishing whether the ride takes place in Brooklyn or in New Jersey, which resonates with Rosler’s own remark on

“demolishing place and time in favor of space.”47

Alexander Alberro noted that the title for Rosler’s series, “Rights of Passage,” suggests the inalienable “rights” of the highway, and the “right of way” often remains only an abstract promise. Rosler’s choice of title also incorporates a pun on “rites of passage,” echoing what the artist had suggested that the mirage of the road constitutes

“the promise and precondition for the possession of ‘all good things.’”48

In a way, Rosler’s work resonates with those by Opie, treating the expressways as artifacts, like an archaeological site of ruin and decay. Her panoramic shots provide a sense of the layered and more-than-human perspective. The panorama is ironic as it implies wide vistas and horizons, but Rosler usually presents blocked or obstructed views that hardly evoke awe and the sublime. The road becomes a place created by decades of

46 Ibid., 22.

47 Ibid.

48 Alexander Alberro, “The Mobile Passage” in Rights of Passage, 40. 344

human activity, workers alternating things and landscapes.49

Unlike Bush’s portrayal of drivers and their cars, Rosler sometimes photographed vehicles moving goods in and out of the city during her travel and routine commute. For example, the gigantic Wal-Mart truck speeding past in Interstate 80, New

Jersey, 1995 [5-8] and the brightly painted flying donuts in Donuts, New Jersey Turnpike,

1995 [5-9] remind the viewer of the expanding circulation of commodities leading to ever-increasingly cultural homogeneity, a homogeneous visual space created by the highway signs and billboards.50

Although born in Brooklyn, after graduating from Brooklyn College, Rosler had lived in California from 1968 to 1980, first in San Diego, where she received her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. In a way, Rosler’s spectacle of passage also is reminiscent of Ruscha’s representation of the driving experience, yet her work shows more confinement and alienation partially due to the panoramic views that included windshield and car interior, as well as the frequent traffic and construction in the New

49 Ibid., 40.

50 Ibid., 42. As discussed, Daniel Boorstin noted that super highways have been the climax in homogenizing the motorist’s landscape. Economy and good engineering require that motorists traverse the dullest expanses of landscape. See Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), 112–113. 345

York metropolitan area. Rosler’s positions also shift from the driver’s seat, front passenger seat, and back seat of the car, offering various casual and actual driving visions between city and suburb, street and freeways.

In Prospect Expressway, Brooklyn, 1995, [5-10] the first image in the book,

Rosler ironically encapsulated the traffic stuck in the lane created by construction dividers. Interestingly, she also recorded a “YOUR AD HERE” sign at the far right, reflecting on the road as a passage of spectacle for consumption. In addition, in Ocean

Parkway, South Brooklyn, 1995, Rosler recorded a “DIP” sign when she photographed the roadside landscape from the back seat of the car. [5-11] Rosler consciously juxtaposed the irony of the yellow “DIP” sign on the modern roadside scenery that was supposedly green and beautiful passage coherent with the view of nature in the park. The smooth ride had to be disrupted by the dips and bumps for precautionary measures for safety, creating a different kind of visual and physical driving experience. While landscapes have variations like hills and dips, roads, especially when under construction, also have “dips.” Still another example, in George Washington Bridge, 1996, Rosler photographed the sign reading “KEEP LEFT” from the driver’s seat while in reality an enormous white truck is occupying the lane left to Rosler’s car. [5-12] As a Conceptualist, 346

Rosler provided seemingly spontaneous snapshots yet thoughtful juxtaposition of text and image, revealing sometimes humorous or contradictory message of verbal expression and visual representation.

In the mid-1950s, urban planner Kevin Lynch already pointed out the consequences of loss of orientation in the contemporary urban landscape, including presumably the most fundamentally disorienting freeways. As such, Lynch assumed that a new symbolic order might be created. A new image of the city, responding to movement and speed with proper forms and signage, might again better orient the modern citizen on the highway. Rosler’s photographs, however, reveal exactly the opposite. For the technically determined scheme of road and vehicle, no orientation is possible, and these images are not memorable. The viewer feels a sense of disorientation and displacement about where Rosler is traveling to in the Lincoln Tunnel or where she is on the

Turnpike.51 Furthermore, Rosler’s work examines the relationship between the driving landscape and the driver’s mentality in relation to everyday construction, traffic, signage, and other visual elements.

Lee Friedlander’s Driving Visions: Revisiting America by Car

51 Anthony Vidler, “Construction Ahead” in Rights of Passage, 22–23. 347

While Rosler focused on her conceptions and visual perceptions about driving in the New York in Rights of Passage, Lee Friedlander provided his driving visions of traveling through most of states in America by Car, 2010. Friedlander has been photographing on the road since the 1960s. (See Chapter 3) Starting in the late 1990s, he continued and elaborated on a series of photographs taken from inside his car during a cross-country road trip. He usually photographed from the driver’s seat, and occasionally from the front or back passenger seat; these images later were published in America by

Car, 2010. For America by Car, he photographed with a mid-size camera, rather than the

35 mm camera he previously used. Therefore, these photographs are in a square format, unlike his earlier ones. Shifting from a 35 mm camera to a mid-size one also indicates that these photographs are an independent series.

The driver's-seat perspective encompasses both the interior and exterior, as we saw with Rosler. Taking photographs spontaneously enabled Friedlander to capture unlikely juxtapositions and unusual perspectives. Friedlander's keen eye for casual photographic encounters, his inherent playfulness and wit, and his unusual but clever compositions mark his idiosyncratic artistic style.52 He also evokes the sensory overload

52 Friedlander’s work has consistently been a mixture of two styles. His image is a seemingly snapshot 348

commonly experienced by American drivers.53

Friedlander sometimes took photographs on the roadside or while stopped for a red light, stop sign, or simply while stuck in traffic. The pictures he took from the back seat might recall his family’s first American road trip during his childhood, a visual experience to which his viewers might relate.54 For example, in his Nebraska, 1999,

[5-13] he captured a herd of cattle in a field and framed them in the center from the back seat. He artfully composed the contrast between the dark color of the cattle and the light tone of the sky and field, while managing the line and form of the car window and door.

The square format and use of black-and-white create an unnaturalness and strangeness, as if the modern has become the vintage. Friedlander opted to intensify spatial oddness and juxtaposition.55

While in the driver’s seat, Friedlander clearly provided the direction of where he went such as in Savannah, Georgia, 2008 and Montana, 2008 [5-14, 15]. It is not easy to

with a sense of spontaneity but sophisticatedly pre-visualized within a formalist approach. See Chapter 3.

53 See the introductory text on the exhibition wall by curator Elisabeth Sussman. Visited September 26, 2010, Whiney Museum of American Art.

54 See Billy Heller “Roadside Eye on America,” a news review of the exhibition America by Car at Whitney Museum of American Art in NY Post. September 3, 2010. Accessed December 8, 2010. http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/roadside_eye_on_america_cTwOVnW6XQmwAGmUFTscAN

55 The square format denies the horizontal vistas but provides a sense of ambiguity that the scene is neither a landscape nor a portrait. 349

take a picture with a 4x5 camera while driving, and yet he still was conscious about the composition of the bridge and its linear perspective. In Savannah, Georgia, 2008, [5-14]

Friedlander’s car was in the middle of the bridge, and he had to move forward, while the lamppost on the right is blurred showing motion. By contrast, in Montana, 2008, [5-15] judging by the speedometer, Friedlander stopped the car in the middle of the highway.

The tracks of the tire on the road surface are clearly discernible, suggesting someone had previously made a sudden stop at this location. One might still encounter an unexpected situation even it seems to be a smooth and safe drive on an empty and vernacular road.

The two images are frontal and employ linear perspective as well as the view from the driver’s seat, creating the same visual effect as if the viewer was the driver at the moment.

As a passenger in the front seat, Friedlander also recorded a winding path and a necessary stop in Death Valley, California, 2008. [5-16] He purposely included a roadside sign and his side-view mirror that are perfectly juxtaposed to each other, showcasing the road condition ahead and the path the artist already had traveled. Such an arrangement also provides the information about the journey yet to be explored and the landscape that already has been seen, along with the part of the interior of the car, 350

suggesting the present moment and its current location inside of the car.

In a formalist fashion, Friedlander developed this mechanism in another image,

Death Valley, California, 2008, [5-17] photographing the stop sign at an intersection, juxtaposing the verbal message and visual information of the location. He photographed these scenes from the front passenger seat, allowing himself more time to compose a picture. In the picture with a stop sign, he deliberately recorded his face reflected in the side-view mirror juxtaposed with the surrounding landscape. The front pillar of the car and the stop sign are in the center of the picture. Friedlander’s idiosyncratic photographic approach is reminiscent of the one developed in his earlier work, allowing blocked shots and positioning subjects in an unconventional way. Friedlander’s thoughtful yet imperfect view of these everyday scenes forces the viewer to be in the car with the artist. It is easy for the viewer to identify with the reflection of the artist in the mirror, perhaps as the artist’s surrogate. More importantly, such shots create multiple-layered space in the picture frame—the space inside and outside the car as well as the mirrored space. By presenting these views inside out from the car, Friedlander sometimes positioned his viewer in an uncomfortable spot because the compositions and data are eccentric; the pictorial space is often disjointed and dissected. 351

Some of Friedlander’s photographs were taken during a rainy or snowy day, presenting a watery and blurry view through the windshield, as shown in New City, New

York, 2008. [5-18] Although the moist windshield creates a beautiful atmospheric effect, the picture suggests a sense of placeless-ness because the ice and fog prevent a clear view of the outside world. This picture echoes the notion of disorientation in Rosler’s series but in a slightly different way. In Rosler’s photographs, the signs, billboards, detours, and constructions that she encountered during the drive appear overwhelming or disorienting.

In Friedlander’s New City, New York, 2008, [5-18] on the other hand, the image represents no such visual information but rather the visual effect of nature. Rosler was in the middle of driving, but Friedlander, in this case however, was most likely about to depart but was struck by such a visual effect of nature on the windshield. Little can be identified outside the car, only the scenery of the moist windshield is the subject of the picture, reiterating that both the artist and the viewer perhaps are stuck in the car because a clear view is required for the safety of driving.

Rather than depicting specific locations, Friedlander’s work in America by Car focuses more on the space in-between: the places in and of transition. Friedlander’s foggy windshield provides an alternative spectacle of driving vision, turning the windshield into 352

a surface that resembles the canvas of a non-representational image, which doubles as a potential safety hazard. Friedlander altered the indexicality of the traditional sense of the landscape.

Friedlander’s work, along with Rosler’s series, evokes a mental state while driving. The traveler’s (or thus viewer’s) mind usually is connected to the viewing and the viewed of an outside world from the car. As the landscape is homogenized and the driving embodies boredom, the travelers manifest the state of tabula rasa, a correspondence between the road and mindscape. It is particularly intriguing in the case of Friedlander’s view of the foggy windshield. In his picture, nothing becomes everything.

Friedlander’s purposeful inclusion of the side-view mirror also implies the past, present, and future as well as the sense of placeless-ness. The picture becomes collage-like, providing unique yet multiple layers of time and space. His driving vision from inside the car not only resembles the first-person point of view commonly seen in the cinematography of road movies, but also invites the viewer to be part of the scene, inserting the viewer into the role of the artist character on the road.

The notion of displaying and interplaying the past, present, and future in 353

Friedlander’s work may be referenced in one of the road movies, A Perfect World, 1993.

While Friedlander began to photograph on the road in the 1960s, A Perfect World depicts an outlaw taking an eight-year-old as hostage and fleeing on the road in 1963 Texas. In the movie, the protagonist Robert “Butch” Haynes, played by Kevin Costner, explains to the child Phillip “Buzz” Perry that a car actually is a time machine during driving:

Haynes: Hey, you ever ridden in a time machine before? Perry: [shakes his head] Haynes: Well sure you have, what do you think this is? Perry: A car. Haynes: You’re looking at this thing bass-ackward, this is a twentieth century time machine. I’m the captain, [tap Phillip on the head] Haynes: back there [taps on the rear view mirror then points out the back windshield] Haynes: well, that’s the past. If life’s moving too slow, you wanna project yourself into the future just step on the gas right here, [steps on the gas pedal] Haynes: See? [giggles] Haynes: If you wanna slow her down, well hell you just step on the brake and you slow her down. Haynes: This is the present Phillip, enjoy it while it lasts.56

Similar to A Perfect World, 1993, in which a car becomes a time machine, Friedlander’s views of driving and traveling on the road in the car, juxtaposing the landscape before

56 See the quotes between the two characters on the Internet Movie Database website, accessed March, 10, 2017, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107808/quotes 354

and behind him along with the present situation and surroundings, project a sense of past, present, and future simultaneously in one picture.

The Beauty of Breakdowns: Amy Stein’s Stranded

As Rosler and Friedlander addressed the state of being on the move as well as at momentary stops during driving, Amy Stein focused on the state of being stuck or left behind on the road in her series Stranded, 2010. Stein conceived of the series when she was driving 65 miles an hour down I-95 in rural Maryland; she saw a car with its emergency lights flashing, broken down on the side of the highway. Stein slowly approached the vehicle and found a group of teenage boys stuck and stranded on the side of one of America’s busiest interstate highways that connects major cities on the East

Coast. With their car broken down, the day was ruined. As they waited for any help from a tow truck, the highway patrol, or a sympathetic motorist, cars raced by and no one stopped. Stein pulled up her camera and photographed them.57

Stein’s Stranded challenges and complicates our preconceptions of safe and comfortable driving. These stranded motorists have gone from the safety and security of

57 See the artist statement, Amy Stein “Stranded” in Visura, no. 2, April, 2009, accessed March, 10, 2017, http://www.visuramagazine.com/amy-stein 355

car travel to a potentially alien and dangerous environment.58 Unlike the photographic lineage of an artist exploring the world through the automobile travel, established by

Evans and then carried on by Frank, Stephen Shore, and Friedlander, Stein revived and renewed the documentary tradition that is exemplified by Dorothea Lange: recording others’ lives and hardships on the road.

As highlighted in her images, Stein’s subjects usually appear tense, angry, vulnerable, anxious, bored, or frustrated. Stein explored the vulnerability and tension that resulted from a vehicular breakdown. Her series also connects to the physical and psychological space where the breakdown occurred, suggesting an uneasy and strange location for the subject and the viewer. No one wants to end up in a situation on the roadside as depicted in Stein’s images, but some do.59

For this series, Stein had to drive for days to look for stranded motorists. She traveled with food, water, a cell phone, and rudimentary tools in case her subjects needed immediate assistance. Stein also had to survey the scene before stopping to make sure it was safe for her to pull over: whether the shoulder was wide enough, the traffic was too

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid. 356

close, or stranded motorists were actually stranded and appeared safe for her to approach.60 Stein photographed with a medium-format camera on a tripod; therefore it took her a moment to get set up to document her subjects, and she was more exposed on the roadside than if she had been using a 35 mm DSLR.61

In Peri, Route 64, Kentucky, [5-19] Stein photographed Peri, the youngest of the three children of a stranded family. When Stein approached the van, she saw the father in the driver’s seat, ill and with oxygen mask on his face, who could not get out of the van for a picture. He said that his wife had walked back into town to get help, but his daughters might agree to be photographed. It was late November and very cold, and the young Peri only had a pink sweat suit on. She posed for Stein and placed her arms inside her shirt try to keep warm. Being photographed perhaps was a timely and nice distraction, and the pose was surreal and beautiful.62

The encounters on the roadside always were unpredictable. For example, in West

Virginia, Stein spotted a group of guys in orange outfits climbing over the hill with guns

60 Ibid.

61 See Jakob Schiller, “Stranded Motorist Photos are Metaphor for Hurricanes, Recession and Loneliness.” In Wired Magazine, January, 10, 2013, accessed March 10, 2017, https://www.wired.com/2013/01/stranded-motorists-become-photographic-metaphors/

62 See the artist statement, Amy Stein “Stranded” in Visura, no. 2, April, 2009, accessed March, 10, 2017, http://www.visuramagazine.com/amy-stein 357

while their friend stayed behind to fix the truck. The man doing the work, Gary, said his friends figured they might get some hunting in while waiting. He agreed to be photographed as long as he could wear his hunting mask.63 [5-20]

Stein’s work involved considerable interactions with the people she encountered on the road. This is significantly different from most other artists who photograph on the road, except for Lange who was known for being good at having conversations with her subjects. Stein sometimes was accompanied by her husband. They once encountered a work crew of federal inmates. Although the prison official refused to be in the picture, the inmates agreed to be photographed only if they could take pictures of Stein with their own phone cameras in return.64 For Stein, the most productive patch of road was the freeway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, which was packed with motorists, and she met a great number of characters.65

Originally inspired by the government’s failed response to the flooding of New

Orleans in 2005, Stein spent years driving across America and photographing stranded

63 On one hand, Gary might feel threatened and need his gun, putting Stein in potential danger. On the other hand, he probably also wanted to protect his identity while showing his personality through the rifle, a powerful and symbolic personal possession. See Jakob Schiller, “Stranded Motorist Photos are Metaphor for Hurricanes, Recession and Loneliness.” In Wired Magazine, January, 10, 2013, accessed March 10, 2017, https://www.wired.com/2013/01/stranded-motorists-become-photographic-metaphors/

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid. 358

motorists. At the time, she was in graduate school and had been told by a professor that she should document the event and its aftermath in New Orleans; instead she came up with Stranded.66 She was then working on another project, driving between her home in

New York and Pennsylvania several times a week. Similar to the residents of New

Orleans, her subjects in Stranded were experiencing hardship, waiting and watching and as the world zoomed by. She described that “It became about being left behind.”67

Stein was interested in the idea of a breakdown as a sort of existential failing.68

Stein noted:

People start off on a journey with the best intentions of arriving at their destination. We make these trips every single day and give them little thought. Suddenly, your car breaks down, your journey is interrupted and you find yourself in a kind of limbo in a completely alien environment. This sudden interruption of a journey strikes me as the perfect metaphor for this time in our history.69

Stein, who received her MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2006, explained that her work was situated in the road photography tradition of Frank,

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid.

68 See Phil Patton, “Stranded: A Photo Collection of Breakdowns” in New York Times, December 14, 2010, accessed March 20, 2017, https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/stranded-a-photo-collection-of-breakdowns/

69 Ibid. 359

Shore, Joel Sternfeld, and others who use imagery of the highway as a metaphor for the

American experience.70

In Stein’s Stranded, the car serves as both figural symbol of American destiny and a literal representation of the personal breakdowns on the road. In comparison with earlier road photographers, who sought to capture the American experience though the journey, Stein’s photographs seek to tell the story through the journey interrupted.71

In addition to an MFA in photography, Stein received a BS and an MS in

Political Science, and she stated that Stranded also is a metaphor for where we are as a nation—politically, spiritually, and socially. Her subjects were both literally and metaphorically stranded on the American roadside. Stein never knew what she would find or what might happen every time she set out in search of stranded motorists. Nevertheless, the uncertainty and possibility kept her interested, and she continued traveling on the road.72

70 Ibid. Stein also stated that her three favorite photographic books are Evans’s American Photographs, Frank’s The Americans, and Mitch Epstein’s Family Business, 2003, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.photoreview.com.au/stories/profiles/fotofreo-photographer-profile-amy-stein,-new-york-city

71 See the description of the series on the artist’s website, accessed March, 10, 2017 http://www.amystein.com/#/stranded/

72 See the artist statement, Amy Stein “Stranded” in Visura, no. 2, April, 2009, accessed March, 10, 2017, http://www.visuramagazine.com/amy-stein. 360

Conclusion

Although both Opie and Bush mainly photographed their series in Los Angeles,

Opie concentrated on the landscape, the structure of the freeways and the unpopulated scenes; whereas Bush focused on the people, seeking to portray the motorist while driving. Opie conceived of her series during the commute and traffic, yet she purposely avoided such themes in her work, by providing the viewer a caprice of one of Los

Angeles’s most iconic vernacular landscape—freeways. She transformed the enormous freeways into eerie yet nostalgic monuments in her intimate panoramic platinum prints.

Working on weekend mornings, as if she were a wanderer on the freeways, Opie freely garnered the scenes that were familiar to motorists but were unable to be captured during the drive. Some frames might be glimpses during the smooth driving condition, others may have been unavoidable views during the traffic, and still others could have been scenes behind the restricted area for authorized personnel only.

One of the important features at play in Opie’s series is the interesting duality or fluidity of being still or being on the move. This feature also is revealed in Bush’s series, but in a different form. Bush’s portraits of the motorists usually are captured during driving at nearly the same speed with the subjects. His images juxtapose and complicate 361

the relationship of being still or in motion—providing a blurry or clear view.

Rosler photographed her series in and around New York City. The series embodies a slightly different driving experience and landscape than the ones by Opie or

Bush. Also encountering frequent stops, Rosler’s pictures were taken during driving, whether the car actually was moving or stuck in the traffic. Unlike Bush’s fixed camera only facing toward the right side through the front window aiming at the subjects,

Rosler’s shooting was spontaneous and casual, translating the fleeting moment of the snapshots. Unlike Opie’s monochromatic panoramic platinum prints, Rosler’s images are taken by a handheld camera and in color, creating a more realistic visual perception of the road condition, especially the orange signs and incandescent lights at construction sites or accidents. Whether it is a drive between Manhattan and Brooklyn, or between New York

City and New Jersey, the disorientation and placeless-ness revealed in Rosler’s work are crucial features that represent both the landscape and mentality of driving, especially in a visually overwhelmed metropolitan area such as New York City. Rosler’s images challenge and subvert the promises of the panorama, usually associated with an awe-inspiring landscape. Consistent with her earlier work concerning the landscape of consumption, Rights of Passage also depict individual elements such as Wal-Mart truck 362

and the Donut to reflect on their relationship to corporate America.

Unlike Rosler, Friedlander’s ride was usually more smooth and pleasing, but the driving vision is sometimes presented with oddity and strangeness, with some humor and irony. As Rosler recorded detours, construction, accidents, and traffic during her driving,

Friedlander’s stops are mostly voluntary whether at the parking lot, intersection, or merely at the roadside. Several of Friedlander’s shots from the inside seat of the car through the foggy or blurry windshield, however, still suggest the sudden disorientation and placeless-ness.

Furthermore, Friedlander’s inclusion of the side-view mirror along with the landscape in front of and behind of car, constructed the multi-layered space and implications of time—past, present, and future.73 This technique also is used in the visual narrative of the road movies, providing common perceptual experience and occasionally key information about the trip of the protagonist.

Different from the Evansian photographic lineage of exploring the world that is later carried on by Frank, Shore, and Friedlander, Stein’s series is reminiscent of the

73 In the early 1960s, Allan D’Arcangelo already included an image of a car’s rear-view mirror in his painting to heighten the suggestion of the past, present, and future in one image, yet Friedlander’s work sometimes includes the reflection of the artist in the mirror, creating a stronger sense of self-reference and connection to the viewer. For the discussion on D’Arcangelo, see Gerald Silk, Automobile and Culture (New York: Abrams, 1984), 139. 363

documentary tradition epitomized by Lange. Different from the photographs that Opie,

Rosler, and Friedlander made at frequent stops, and Bush’s portraits of drivers, Stein’s work pays attention to the stranded motorists on the roadside. Opie questioned the imaginary conception of traveling on the road that leads to an unimpeded, pleasurable, safe, and comfortable journey, despite that fact that these stranded subjects are stuck and left behind. The actual situations pictured by Stein disrupt the promise of the American dream of mobility fulfilled by the open road; it has been replaced by an interrupted journey and immobility.

Although both portraying motorists on the freeway, Stein’s work provides interesting contrast with the one by Bush, whose work could establish fleeting intimacy but also is detached and about surveillance. Stein’s series has more human interaction with the stranded travelers she encountered. Stein traveled with food, water, a cell phone, and an emergency toolkit, but once she was certain that there was no present and clear danger for the stranded, she began photographing her subjects. Rather than doing what a first responder or a technician of the roadside service would do, Stein is fulfilling her role as an artist within the documentary tradition.

The road seems never ending, and the representation of the road experience 364

continues to evolve. Since some photographs are taken on the freeways, one might wonder the price, consequence, and actual situation of being on the freeways. Freeways originally were designed to be controlled-access highways for high-speed vehicular traffic, but in reality the case might offer the opposite result. On the metaphorical level, some images invite the viewer to question whether freeways provide more freedom for motorists, or challenge the notion of mobility and accessibility. Opie, Bush, Rosler,

Friedlander, and Stein, whether traveling on regional or national scale, provided some unique yet concurrent driving experience and roadscapes. 365

CONCLUSION

AMERICAN ROAD RE-ENCOUNTERED

Through the analysis of the pertinent photographic books and series, it is clear that road photography can be considered a genre tradition within the medium that is continually transforming. The photographic lineage from Walker Evans to Robert Frank, and then from them to Lee Friedlander and Stephen Shore respectively is distinctively evident. Although the images are stylistically different, Frank’s The Americans,

1958/1959 is indebted, iconographically and structurally, to Evans’s American

Photographs, 1938. Evans dedicated to elevate photography’s status as an art form through his modernism and aestheticization of the medium; whereas Frank wanted to present his personal, skeptical, and critical commentary about postwar America through the photographs taken during the cross-country road trip.

In the 1960s, Friedlander consciously continued and synthesized the legacies established by Evans and Frank in his seemingly snapshot yet sophisticatedly composed pictures. Similar to Frank, Shore took a cross-country road trip as a means to fully explore America, and he emulated Frank’s snapshot aesthetic in his first road-trip series, 366

American Surfaces, 1973, but in color. In the second road trip series, Uncommon Places,

1982, Shore ultimately switched to a large 8-by-10 view camera and reenacted the analytical viewing that Evans exemplified. During his trans-continental road trip in the

1970s and 1980s, Shore embodied a more exemplary “road consciousness” in recalling both Evans’s and Frank’s styles and legacies, while his contemporaries, such as Robert

Adams, William Eggleston, and Joel Sternfeld, crossed paths with him.

These practices formulate a unique American photographic pilgrimage. Such lineage also manifests the photographic practice of an artist exploring the world, while experiencing and picturing America during the road trip. In the meantime, another lineage should not be overlooked, a more humanitarian and sociological approach in documenting highway migrants demonstrated by Dorothea Lange, as opposed to Evans’s modernist and formalist tradition of depicting automobile landscapes. Lange epitomized a different documentary paradigm, showing more concern about others rather than self.

More importantly, in Highway to the West, 1938, she presented an iconic view of an empty highway, a frontal shot through linear perspective, simple yet compelling. Such classical composition recalls the landscape photography in 19th century associated with

Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion, especially the railroad imagery. This visual 367

format is emulated in Frank’s and Shore’s work.

Having grown up in Oklahoma City, with personal connection to the history of the

Okies and a fascination for the West, Ed Ruscha also was inspired by the photographic tradition of being on the road exemplified by Evans and Frank. Nevertheless, he evaded such tradition in the medium’s history but offered a Conceptualist approach and amateurish quality in his work, a different attitude from Evans, Frank, and his contemporary Friedlander.

Since 1990, artists have revived this tradition and remained engaged with the subject matter of driving and road-scapes. Inspired by her experience of routine commute and constant traffic, Catherine Opie, however, concentrated on road construction and the formal beauty of the freeways, representing the landscape that defines, divides, and connects Los Angeles. Friedlander continued his road trip across America but focused on

“driving vision,” photographing the highway and roadside landscape from the inside the car. Also shooting from the inside the auto, Andrew Bush made photographs of drivers next to his car on the freeway, which is reminiscent of Evans’s portraits of anonymous subway passengers and echoed Ruscha’s Conceptualist approach. Also shooting from inside a car, but ulike Bush’s practice in California, Martha Rosler depicted the anxiety 368

and alienation of driving in the metropolitan New York area. She constantly encountered construction, detours, accidents, and a plethora of visual information such as signs and billboards, even advertisements on a truck. The failure or negation of a freeway’s accessibility and smooth ride is then translated into Amy Stein’s encounters with motorists stuck and being left behind on the highway. Stein’s work leads us back to the documentary tradition epitomized by Lange, recording the life and hardships of travelers along the road.

Although the layout of the chapters is chronological, the dissertation engages the genre thematically through several comparisons in the case studies, especially for themes such as the empty highways; gas stations; drive-in theaters; driving visions; the inspiration from the postcard, as well as other aesthetic concerns and photographic approaches.

Moving/Looking Forward: Alternative Road Experience(s)

As Liz Wells suggested in Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and

Identity, in analyzing images and assessing photographic books and series, we are interested in ways in which content, metaphor, and form intertwine to provoke questions 369

of representation and identity, as well as techniques and technologies.1 Although this dissertation presents the evolution of American road photography, there are other critical issues and aspects yet to be considered and explored—for example, the foreign perspective; the feminist discourse; the black experience; and the virtual road trip.

First, it is important to expand the genre study, teasing out why and how over time, not only Americans but also foreign photographers have turned to the symbolism of the open road in America. As discussed, Frank certainly played a pivotal role in securing the genre of road photography through his continuation and variation of an earlier tradition.

Yet one of the critical dimensions he provided is the view of America through an outsider’s perspective, skeptical and critical of the social issues and material culture in postwar America.

Recognizing the road as a photographic genre, in Aperture’s recent exhibition and publication, The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip, several foreign artists such as Inge Morath (Austrian), Victor Burgin (British), Bernard Plossu (French),

Jacob Holdt (Danish), Shina Fujiwara (Japanese), as well as Taiyo Onorato and Nico

1 See Liz Wells, Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 10. 370

Krebs (Swiss) were all included, but they remain understudied in the field.2

Borrowing from Jack Kerouac’s account of Frank’s The Americans, a comparative study about the ways in which artists, both American and foreign, visualize and document the “American-ness” and “Everything-ness” in their photographs of the American road trip, should be considered. For example, it is crucial to recognize the ways in which foreign artists perceive and picture America similarly to or differently from American artists. In conjunction with the global turn in art history, such comparative study also advances new perspectives on American photography and visual culture in a trans-national and trans-cultural context.

Furthermore, in a predominantly Caucasian male version of the history of road photography, this genre study awaits a critical review within feminist discourse. Scholars also should debate whether the feminist discourse is useful in discussing the road photographs taken by female artists. On the one hand, as presented in the dissertation, which includes books or series by Dorothea Lange, Catherine Opie, Martha Rosler, and

Amy Stein, the feminist lens seems to have had a far reach. While Lange and Stein seem

2 See David Campany, The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip (New York: Aperture, 2015). As Campany stated, The Open Road is the first book to explore the photographic road trip as a genre, presenting the story of photographers for whom the American road is muse. 371

most interested in the plight of people, their gender perhaps allows them more approachable and more easily to interact with strangers, less intimidating than male photographers. For Opie and Rosler, though, their road-inspired works seem to deviate from their more famous depiction or commentary of the gender identity. On the other hand, drawn from a cross-country road trip between New York City and California,

French artist Sophie Calle’s 1996 movie, Double Blind: No Sex Last Night complicates a

Caucasian male dominated narrative in the field. As a foreigner, Calle’s work responds to the tradition of cross-country road trip in America, but the film debates the traditional female role and domesticity revealed in the relationship with her husband, collaborator

Greg Shephard, during the trip. Shephard and Calle often had different opinions and interpretations of what happened on the road. Yet, in light of a repressive history of the women’s travel narratives, Calle’s view of an autobiographical road film eventually overtakes Shepaherd’s version.3

Still another pertinent example that renews the feminist discourse is Highway

Kind, 2016 by Justine Kurland, and a portion of this series was included in The Open

3 Toward the completion of this dissertation project, I co-chaired a session called On the Road Revisited: Art and Travel since 1900 at the College Art Association Annual Conference in New York in February 2017. The feminist discourse caught my attention as Laura Shea, one of my panelists, presented a paper on Sophie Calle’s work, complementing the field with a feminist approach. For Calle’s work, No Sex Last Night (Double Blind), 1992, 35 mm film, 76:00 minutes. 372

Road. Kurland set off on her road journey in 2005 with her young son, Casper. Casper loves trains and is named after the German landscape painter, Caspar David Friedrich. As a “Migrant Mother,” traveling in her customized minivan, Kurland and her son normally headed North during the summer and South during the winter. Sometimes being mistaken as homeless, Kurland’s series presents a personal and realistic view of living on the road along with encounters with American landscape and people they met at the campgrounds, auto garages, and on the roadside. Her series presents the idea of freedom associated with the open road while challenging the conception of good “motherhood” during this family trip, as Casper sometimes enhances his literacy by reading the signs and billboard on the roadside.4

As suggested in Chapter 2, a comparison between Frank’s and Gordon Parks’s identities was revealed in their images; the field also requires a more diverse analysis of the black experience and about other minorities traveling on the highway. Between 1936 and 1966, Victor Hugo Green, a mailman from New York City, published an annual guidebook for African American motorists commonly known as Negro Motorist Green

Book/Traveler’s Green Book. During the years of segregation, African Americans,

4 See Justine Kurland, Highway Kind (New York: Aperture, 2016). 373

especially the emerging middle class, bought automobiles as soon as possible and many took to driving, in part to avoid segregation and discrimination on public transportation.

Therefore, the Green Book became “the bible for black travel,” enabling black travelers to find lodgings, gas stations, and restaurants that would serve them along the road.5

Even Parks vividly remembered that during his years affiliated with the Farm Security

Administration/Office of War Information (FSA-OWI) he was turned away by a hotel in upstate New York.6

Another relevant note in visual culture, for example, in a 1989 movie Driving

Miss Daisy, Hoke Colburn, played by Morgan Freeman, was a chauffeur for Mrs. Daisy

Werthan, a wealthy, widowed, Caucasian, Jewish, retired school teacher living in Atlanta,

Georgia. During a trip to Mrs. Daisy’s family member’s birthday party in Alabama, they made a stop at a gas station, Mrs. Daisy used the restroom, but Colburn was not allowed to because he was African-American.7 Therefore, the black experience, as well as travel experiences and documentations of other minorities must be implemented and studied to

5 For a more complete collection of The Green Book, see New York Public Library website, accessed April 10, 2017, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-green-book

6 See the oral history interview conducted on December 30, 1964, Archives of American Art, accessed April 10, 2017, https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-gordon-parks-11480 Parks recalled that the hotel mentioned its policy of not welcoming African American and Jewish visitors.

7 See Bruce Beresford, Driving Miss Daisy, (Warner Bros., 1989). 374

provide a fuller and more diverse understanding of the road experience outside of the mainstream norm.8

In terms of virtual experience, in recent years, artists have even traveled across

America virtually through the Google Street View, as evidenced in Matthew Jensen’s 49

States, 2008–2009, and Doug Rickard’s A New American Picture, 2012.9 The photographs originally were taken by Google Street View cars while mapping America, but were later captured or manipulated by the artists. Their works not only recognize and redefine the road trip tradition, but also signal a new understanding of the road as a virtual site/sight explored by travelers parked in front of a computer. Therefore, the virtual/physical experience of the American road trip still deserves to be examined and compared.

These alternative road experiences lead us to reconsider the symbolism of the

American road through various lenses of race, genre, class, and other identity issues, as well as through the technological impact on photography and the travel experience. Road

8 Robert Frank also encountered hostility in the South largely because of his identity as a foreigner and a Jew. See Chapter 2.

9 For Matthew Jesen’s project, see Metropolitan Museum of Art website, accessed April 11, 2017, http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/291984 Jensen’s series was shown in a 2012 exhibition titled After Photoshop. During the production of the project, Google had not yet mapped Hawaii. While Jensen manipulated the images taken by Google Street View, Rickard photographed Google Street View on the computer screen with a 35 mm camera on a tripod with slow speed. See David Campany, “In the Frame,” in Doug Rickard, Doug Rickard: A New American Picture (London; Köln: Koenig, 2012), 8. 375

as a “place-myth” has been repeated, revived, and reconstructed as revealed in visual representations.10 As a discursive system, photography integrally works with the symbolic and the mythological. For many artists, tourists, and the general public,

American and foreign, the road is a place of symbol and myth as embodied in the open sky, empty highways, gas stations, and other roadside services and places.11 Every representation of the highway and the roadside is a record of human values and actions imposed on the road over time. The formal and personal choices reflect collective interests and influences, whether philosophical, political, or otherwise. The fundamental and ultimate questions concern what ideologies road photography perpetuates and represents.12 As we move and look forward, a fuller and more diverse understanding of the history of American road photography is a (re)search to be continued in order to redefine the formal qualities, aesthetic values, and cultural meanings of this genre.

10 A “place-myth” is constructed by numerous images of the place, including its stereotypes and clichéd reception of the place constantly circulated in society. See David Crouch and Nina Lübbren, Visual Culture and Tourism (Oxford; New York: Berg, 2003), 5.

11 Wells, Land Matters, 12. In a way, these themes often are considered to be American, similar to the fact that the open sky, low horizon, and windmills are common themes in the 17th century prints that depict and define the Dutch vernacular landscape.

12 Deborah Bright, “Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men: An Inquiry into the Cultural Meanings of Landscape Photography,” in Richard Bolton, ed., The Contest of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 126. 376

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ILLUSTRATIONS

[1-1] Walker Evans, Roadside Gas Sign, [1-2] Walker Evans, Lunch Wagon Detail, 1929, API-8 New York, 1931, API-9

[1-3] Walker Evans, Parked Car, Small [1-4] Walker Evans, Parked Cars and Elm Town Main Street, 1932, API-10 Trees on Broadway, from High Elevation Saratoga Springs, New York, 1931, API-27 (also known as Main Street, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1931) 395

[1-5] Walker Evans, Main Street of County [1-6] Walker Evans, Street Scene, Seat, Alabama, 1936 or Main Street, Greensboro, Alabama, 1936 Greensboro, Alabama, API-26, FSA

[1-7] Walker Evans, Roadside View, [1-8] Walker Evans, Roadside Gas Station Alabama Coal Area Company Town, 1936, with Miners' Houses across Street, or Roadside Gas Station and Miners’ Lewisburg, Alabama, Dec 17, 1935 Houses, Lewisburg, Alabama, Dec 17, 1935, APII-7, FSA 396

[1-9] WalkerEvans, Scott’s Run Mining [1-10] Walker Evans, Highway Corner, Camp Near Morgantown,West Virginia, Reedsville West Virginia, June 1935 1935, FSA

[1-11] Walker Evans, Roadside Stand near [1-12] Walker Evans, Garage in Southern Birmingham, 1936, API-35 City Outskirts, 1936, or Garage, Atlanta, Georgia, 1936, API-25, FSA 397

[1-13] Walker Evans, Westchester, New [1-14] Thomas Gainsborough, Mr. and York, Farmhouse, 1931, APII-8 Mrs. Andrews, 1749

[1-15] Walker Evans, Street Scene with [1-16] Walker Evans, Sidewalk in Parked Cars, Mule-Drawn Wagon, and Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1936, API-24, FSA Bucket Seat Model T Ford in Foreground, Marion, Alabama, 1936, FSA

[1-17] Walker Evans, Main Street Block, [1-18] Walker Evans, Country Store and Selma, Alabama, Dec. 1935 Gas Station, Alabama, 1936, APII-14, FSA 398

[1-19] Edward Hopper, Early Sunday [1-20] Edward Hopper, Sunday, 1926 Morning, 1930

[1-21] Edward Hopper, Gas, 1940 [1-22] Walker Evans, Joe’s Auto Graveyard, Pennsylvania, 1936, API-7, FSA

[1-23] Used Car Week, Chicago, 1929 [1-24] Walker Evans, Houses and LIFE magazine, by Associated Press Billboards in Atlanta, 1936, API-47, FSA 399

[1-25] Unknown Artist, Front Street, [1-26] Walker Evans, Street Scene, Morgan Looking North, Morgan City, LA, 1929 City, Louisiana, 1935

[1-27] covered wagon 1939 style [1-28] Oklahoma Land Rush, 1893, Dorothea Lange, Again the Covered historical image from the Oklahoma Wagon, near Holtville, Imperial Valley. Historical Society February 1939. Again the covered wagon. Immigrating carrot puller camp 400

[1-29] statistics from the FSA and [1-30] Dorothea Lange, U.S. 99, San California Department of Agriculture, Joaquin Valley, November, 1938 showing the origins of the migrants to California

[1-31] Margaret Bourke-White, Bread Line [1-32] Dorothea Lange, Billboard on U.S. during the Louisville Flood, Kentucky, Highway 99 in California. National 1937 Advertising Campaign Sponsored by the National Association of Manufacturers, 1937 401

[1-33] Dorothea Lange, Toward Los [1-34] Dorothea Lange, Highway to the Angeles, California, March 1937 West, U.S. 54, New Mexico, 1938

[1-35] Dorothea Lange, homeless family [1-36] Carleton E. Watkins, Cape Horn traveling on the road she encountered in near Celilo, 1867 Atoka County, Oklahoma June 16, 1938 402

[1-37] Dorothea Lange, Southwestern New [1-38] Meindert Hobbema, The Avenue at Mexico, June 1938 Middelharnis, 1689

[1-39]Dorothea Lange, An American [1-40]John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath, Exodus, p.60 1940, film still

[1-41] John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath, [1-42] Dorothea Lange, A Family with 7 1940, film still Children from Paris, Arkansas, on the Highway near Webber Falls, Oklahoma, June 27, 1938 403

[1-43] Otto Hagel, Lettuce Strike, 1936 in [1-44] John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath, Dorothea Lange, American Exodus, p.138 1940, film still

404

[2-1] Robert Frank, Covered Car—Long [2-2] Robert Frank, U.S. 91, Leaving Beach, California, 1955 Blackfoot, Idaho, 1956

[2-3] Robert Frank, U.S. 285, New Mexico, [2-4] Robert Frank, New York, 1951 1955

[2-5] Robert Frank, View from Hotel [2-6] Robert Frank, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Window, Butte, Montana, 1956 1955 405

[2-7] Robert Frank, Car Accident–U.S. 66, [2-8] Robert Frank, Crosses on Scene of between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona, Highway Accident–U.S. 91, Idaho, 1956 1955-1956

[2-9] Robert Frank, St. Francis, Gas [2-10] Robert Frank, Assembly Line, Station, and City Hall, Los Angeles, 1956 Detroit, 1955

[2-11] Robert Frank, Candy Store, New [2-12] Robert Frank, Café, Beaufort, South York City, 1955-1956 Carolina, 1955-1956 406

[2-13] Robert Frank, Bar, Las Vegas, [2-14] Robert Frank, Bar, New York City, Nevada, 1955 1955-1956

[2-15] Robert Frank, Restaurant, U.S. 1 [2-16] Robert Frank, Drive-in Movie, Leaving Columbia, South Carolina, 1955 Detroit, 1955

[2-17] Robert Frank, Charleston, South [2-18] Gordon Parks, Airline Terminal, Carolina, 1955 Atlanta, Georgia, 1956 407

[2-19] Robert Frank, Trolley, New Orleans, [2-20] Robert Frank, Fourth of July - Jay, 1955 New York, 1956

[2-21] Robert Frank, Canal Street, New [2-22] Robert Frank, Funeral, St. Helena, Orleans, 1955 South Carolina, 1955

[2-23] Robert Frank, Belle Isle, Detroit, [2-24] Robert Frank, Detroit, 1955 1955 408

[2-25] Robert Frank, Public Park, Ann [2-26] Robert Frank, Main Arbor, Michigan, 1955 Street–Savannah, Georgia, 1955

[2-27] Robert Frank, Parade, Hoboken, [2-28] Walker Evans, Sidewalk and Shop New Jersey, 1955 Front, New Orleans, 1935

[2-29] Robert Frank, Hoover Dam, 1955 [2-30] Robert Frank, U.S.90, en route to Del Rio, Texas, 1956 409

[3-1] Dennis Hopper, Double Standard, [3-2] Ed Ruscha, Twentysix Gasoline 1961 Stations, 1962, Contact Sheet

[3-3] Ed Ruscha, Fina–Groom, Texas, [3-4] Ed Ruscha, Fina–Groom, Texas, 1962, 1962, frame from the contact sheet final print 410

[3-5] Ed Ruscha, Hudson–Amarillo, Texas, [3-6] Ed Ruscha, Mobil–Shamrock, Texas, 1962, original frame 1962, original frame

[3-7] Ed Ruscha, Enco–Conway, Texas, [3-8] Ed Ruscha, Gas, 1962 1962, original frame 411

[3-9] Ed Ruscha, Standard Station, [3-10] Ed Ruscha, Standard Station with Amarillo, Texas, 1962 Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half, 1964

[3-11] Vija Celmins, Freeway, 1966 [3-12] John Baldessari, The Backs of All the Trucks Passed While Driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, California, Sunday, 20 January, 1963, 1963 412

[3-13] Ed Ruscha, Standard Station, [3-14] Ed Ruscha, Every Building on the Amarillo, Texas, 1963 Sunset Strip, 1966

[3-15] Ed Ruscha holding his book Every [3-16] Ed Ruscha, from Thirtyfour Parking Building on the Sunset Strip, 1967 Lots, 1967

[3-17] Ed Ruscha, Royal Road Test, 1967 [3-18] Ed Ruscha, Royal Road Test, 1967 413

[3-19] Lee Friedlander, Haverstraw, New [3-20] Lee Friedlander, Monsey, New York, York, 1966 1963

[3-21] Lee Friedlander, Galax, Virginia, [3-22] Lee Friedlander, Baltimore, 1962 1962

[3-23] Lee Friedlander, Lone Star Café, [3-24] Ed Ruscha, Beeline, Holbrook, Texas, 1965 Arizona, 1962 414

[3-25] Lee Friedlander, Route 9W, New [3-26] Lee Friedlander, Mount Rushmore, York, 1969 South Dakota, 1969

[3-27] Lee Friedlander, New Orleans, [3-28] Lee Friedlander, New Orleans, 1969 1968

[3-29] Lee Friedlander, Volunteer [3-30] Robert Frank Barber Shop through Fireman, Walden, New York, 1972 Screen Door—McClellanville, South Carolina, 1955 415

[3-31] Lee Friedlander, Butte, Montana, [3-32] Lee Friedlander, Albuquerque, New 1970 Mexico, 1972

416

[4-1] Stephen Shore, Potter County [4-2] Stephen Shore, Polk Street, 1971 from Courthouse, 1971 from Amarillo Amarillo

[4-3] Stephen Shore, A Road Trip Journal, [4-4] Stephen Shore, American Surfaces, July 8, 1973 2005 package cover 417

[4-5] Stephen Shore, Grand Canyon, [4-6] Stephen Shore, Durango, Colorado, Arizona, June, 1972 from American June, 1973 from American Surfaces Surfaces

[4-7] Stephen Shore, Amarillo, Texas, July, [4-8] Andy Warhol, Refrigerator, undated 1972 from American Surfaces

[4-9] Stephen Shore, Clinton, Oklahoma [4-10] Stephen Shore, Springfield, Illinois, July, 1972 from American Surfaces July, 1972 from American Surfaces 418

[4-11] Stephen Shore, Amarillo, Texas, [4-12] Stephen Shore, Raleigh, North July, 1972 from American Surfaces Carolina, June, 1972 from American Surfaces

[4-13] Stephen Shore, Delray Beach, [4-14] Stephen Shore, Cape Kennedy, Florida, March, 1973 from American Florida, April-May, 1973, from American Surfaces Surfaces

[4-15] Garry Winogrand, Apollo 11 Moon [4-16] Stephen Shore, Rolla, Missouri, July, Shot, Cape Kennedy, Florida, 1969 1972 from American Surfaces 419

[4-17] Stephen Shore, Mineral Wells, [4-18] Stephen Shore, Amarillo, Texas, Texas, June, 1972 from American Surfaces Aug., 1973 from American Surfaces

[4-19] Stephen Shore, Canyon, New [4-20] Stephen Shore, Memphis, Tennessee, Mexico, July, 1972 from American December, 1973 from American Surfaces Surfaces (William Eggleston)

[4-21] Stephen Shore, Room 125, [4-22] Stephen Shore, Richland Mall, U.S. Westbank Motel, Idaho Falls, Idaho, July 30, Mansfield, Ohio, July 5, 1973 from 18, 1973 from Uncommon Places Uncommon Places 420

[4-23] Stephen Shore, Yellowstone [4-24] Stephen Shore’s Doug’s Bar B Q No. National Park, Wyoming, July 17, 1973 1, 1971 from Amarillo from Uncommon Places

[4-25] The Famous Blue Grill on U.S. 40, [4-26] Dixie Diner, Hwy. No. 301 and Elmo, I.L. from Martin Parr’s Boring Interstate 95, Kenly, N.C. from Martin Postcards USA Parr’s Boring Postcards USA

[4-27] Stephen Shore, U.S. 89, Arizona, [4-28] Timothy O’Sullivan, Sand Dunes, June 1972 from American Surfaces Carson Desert, 1867 421

[4-29] Stephen Shore, I-8, Yuma, Arizona, [4-30] Stephen Shore, U.S. 97, South of September 23, 1974 from Uncommon Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973 from Places Uncommon Places

[4-31] Toledo Car at the Grand Canyon, [4-32] Stephen Shore, Beverly Boulevard Grand View Point, Arizona, 1902 and La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, California, June 21, 1975 from Uncommon Places 422

[4-33] Stephen Shore, Sidney Lust’s [4-34] Stephen Shore, West Ninth Avenue, Drive-in Theatre, U.S. 1, College Park, Amarillo, Texas, October 2, 1974 from Maryland, January 21, 1976 from Uncommon Places Uncommon Places

[4-35] Stephen Shore, Sugar Bowl [4-36] Stephen Shore, U.S. 10, Post Falls, Restaurant, Gaylord, Michigan, July, 7, Idaho, August 25, 1974 from Uncommon 1973 from Uncommon Places Places 423

[4-37] Stephen Shore, Presidio, Texas, [4-38] Wim Wenders, untitled, undated, February, 21, 1975 from Uncommon from Einmal, 1994 /Once, 2001 Places (presumably taken in 1983)

[4-39] Stephen Shore, Room 219, Holiday [4-40] Stephen Shore, Brownsville, Inn, Winter Haven, Florida, November 16, Tennessee, May 3, 1974 from Uncommon 1977 from Uncommon Places Places 424

[4-41] Stephen Shore, Amarillo, Texas, [4-42] Stephen Shore, Cedar Springs Road, July, 1972 from American Surfaces Dallas, Texas, June 5, 1976 from Uncommon Places

[4-43] Lee Friedlander, House on [4-44] Stephen Shore, Bozeman, Montana, Highway, 1975 1981 from Uncommon Places 425

[4-45] Robert Adams, Mobile Homes, [4-46] Robert Adams, Outdoor Theater and Jefferson County, Colorado, 1973 Cheyenne Mountain, 1968

[4-47] Robert Adams, Along Interstate 25, [4-48] Robert Adams, Newly Occupied 1968-71 Tract Houses, Colorado Springs, 1968 426

[4-49] Frank Gohlke, Landscape, St. Paul, [4-50] William Eggleston, Southern Minnesota, 1974 Environs of Memphis, 1971 from William Eggleston’s Guide

[4-51] William Eggleston, Memphis, 1969 [4-52] Gallery view, Signs of Life: Symbols from William Eggleston’s Guide in the American City, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1976 427

[4-53] William Eggleston, untitled from [4-54] Stephen Shore, Sandusky, Ohio, July, Los Alamos 1972 from American Surfaces

[4-55] William Eggleston, Mississippi, [4-56] William Eggleston, untitled, from 1971-74 from Los Alamos Election Eve 428

[4-57] Stephen Shore, U.S. 1 Arundel, [4-58] Joel Sternfeld, Roadside Rest Area, Maine, July 17, 1974 from Uncommon White Sand, New Mexico, September, 1980 Places from American Prospects

[4-59] Joel Sternfeld, Near Lake Powell, [4-60] Joel Sternfeld, McLean, Virginia, Arizona, August, 1979 from American December, 1978 from American Prospects Prospects 429

[4-61] Joel Sternfeld, Exhausted Renegade [4-62] Joel Sternfeld, After a Flash Flood, Elephant, Woodland, Washington, June Rancho Mirage, California, July 1979 from 1979 from American Prospects American Prospects

[4-63] Joel Sternfeld, Pendleton, Oregon, [4-64] Joel Sternfeld, Buckingham, June 1980 from American Prospects Pennsylvania, August, 1978 from American Prospects

430

[5-1] Wim Wenders, Paris, Texas, 1984 [5-2] Wim Wenders, Paris, Texas, 1984

[5-3] Catherine Opie, Untitled # 1, 1994, [5-4] Catherine Opie, Untitled #38, 1995, from Freeways from Freeways

[5-5] Andrew Bush, Women racing [5-6] Andrew Bush, Man heading south at southwest at 41 mph along 26th Street near 73 mph on Interstate 5 near Buttonwillow the Riviera Country Club, Pacific Drive outside of Bakersfield, California, at Palisades, California, at 1:14 p.m. on a 5:36 p.m. on a Tuesday in March 1992 Tuesday in February 1997 from Vector from Vector Portraits Portraits 431

[5-7] Andrew Bush, Man traveling [5-8] Martha Rosler, Interstate 80, New southeast on Route 101 at approximately Jersey, 1995 from Rights of Passage 71 mph somewhere around Camarillo, California, on a summer evening in 1994 from Vector Portraits

[5-9] Martha Rosler, Donuts, New Jersey [5-10] Martha Rosler, Prospect Turnpike, 1995 from Rights of Passage Expressway, Brooklyn, 1995 from Rights of Passage

[5-11] Martha Rosler, Ocean Parkway, [5-12] Martha Rosler, George Washington South Brooklyn, 1995 from Rights of Bridge, 1996 from Rights of Passage Passage 432

[5-13] Lee Friedlander, Nebraska, 1999 [5-14] Lee Friedlander, Savannah, from America by Car Georgia, 2008 from America by Car

[5-15] Lee Friedlander, Montana, 2008 [5-16] Lee Friedlander, Death Valley, from America by Car California, 2008 from America by Car 433

[5-17] Lee Friedlander, Death Valley, [5-18] Lee Friedlander, New City, New California, 2008 from America by Car York, 2008 from America by Car

[5-19] Amy Stein, Peri, Route 64, [5-20] Amy Stein, Gary, West Virginia, Kentucky, 2005–2008 from Stranded 2005–2008 from Stranded