There were plans to post for my one year anniversary, which occurred last January 20th. Yet before one new it, the month of January had passed in a block of an eye. Though I did write and posted, a few days later decided to withdraw it back to a draft and save it for another time. In the meantime, my mind was preoccupied with a road trip I would like to take in April.
So out came the camera and tripod, some props and I then cleared off the dinning room table, as I use it for my table top photography, especially since it receive northern light.
When we arrived in New York from Europe, my father drove us in a deep burgundy colored Chevrolet across the US. One of the roads we took, was highway Route 66 before finally arriving in Los Angeles.
I still have faint memories of our trip through New Mexico and Arizona, a land that captured my imagination and had me falling in love with American Indian culture. Since the fifties were the hay days of western culture movies, I always was routing for the Indians, even though they ended up usually dead, for ‘a good Indian is a dead Indian,’ was the expression of the day.
Even though Route 66 is no longer what it was in 1959, due to being replaced with an alternative route, I cannot help but feel drawn to the area. In part because of the distinctive fifties Americana Road architecture now, mostly decaying, succumbing to time and nature.
Then there are the old western movies by director Henry Ford, which featured wide open desolate plains, where mountains raise up from the red earth, reaching for the sky, where one feels close to ones god. The kind of landscape captured by American Impressionist Edgar Paynes.
It is here I wish to photograph, as well as paint my impressions of the land and what remains of the architecture and its people.
For now this road trip is only a dream, a wish that may have to wait another year, but then I have waited a long time since my last road trip, which was through Ireland and I was twenty-five.
Thank you for your visit
E.A.
