O Say, Can You See?

Alabama, Jacob Holdt

The road trip is as American as apple pie, child obesity and Wal-mart.

And for those who have made this nationalistic pilgrimage know that the act of taking photographs is akin to a sacred rite. So finally, for the first time ever, a survey of the American Road trip has been undertaken by David Campany, one of the world’s foremost authors on photography, and edited by Denise Wolff.

The pan-continental survey, called The Open Road, features the efforts of many of the world’s greatest modern photographers (many of whom, like Robert Frank and Stephen Shore made some of their best work on the streets of New York City) as they try to interpret the manifold American character. What emerges from this colossal work is a vision of American sublimity; a vision too vast to be comprehended in one image or sentence, and too strange to grasp head-on, but viewed obliquely, and from many different angles, it is just possible to gain a glimpse.

Last week, The Open Road was the recipient of The Alice Award, given by Furthermore, a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund. The J.M. Kaplan Fund has a long history of supporting projects in Lower Manhattan. The award was named after Alice Kaplan, the first vice-president of the Fund, and one of the founding supporters of the South Street Seaport Museum.

Below are some of the striking images in the book. Click here for more information.

Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Broken Street Line, 2008

Inge Morath, Golden Nugget, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1960

Todd Hido, #6097, 2007

First Image Courtesy of Jacob Holdt

Second Image Courtesy of Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs,
Courtesy the artists and RaebervonStenglin, Zurich and Peter Lav, Copenhagen

Third Image Courtesy of Inge Morath/Magnum Photos

Final Image Courtesy of Todd Hido and Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, California