HIGHWAY, March 2017-April 2020

 

US Highway 75 runs for 1289 miles, from Dallas in the south to the Canadian border to the north. It runs through Omaha, Nebraska, and I would drive part of it every day on my way to and from work. I would always see these abandoned
cars along the road during these drives, and for some inexplicable reason, have the Tom Waits song "What's He Building?" in my head. That song, with its abstract descriptions of the mundane, became a driving force for the imagery. The idea of the unknown and of what lies behind the doors and windows of abandoned vehicles. Whose cars were they? Was there an accident? Did they run out of gas? Was someone shot in a deal gone wrong? Maybe it was just an abandoned vehicle, without a story to tell.

 

I started shooting them in an effort to make the mundane somehow appear alive. Bloody cars and cars with yellow tape wrapped around then like a crime scene. Cars bashed in and cars looking like they rolled out of an old lady's garage.
Older, newer, fire scarred and sun blistered. I soon began to realize that every car had a story. The way that every tree has roots you cannot see or that under every scar is a unwritten novel. Road trips and argument, lovers and friends. All
just a faded memory now as these vehicles wait for the junkyard.

 

"But what's he building in there?
He has no friends, but he gets a lot of mail.
I'll bet he spent a little time in jail.
I heard he was up on the roof last night.
Signaling with a flashlight."