Sweet Old World 10X32.jpg

Somewhere Along the Way

"the lone automobile presses forth his eager insignificance in noseplates & licenses into the vast promise of life"
– Jack Kerouac, (from the introduction of Robert Frank’s, The Americans)

The automobile has been an iconic presence throughout my life, as my father was a service station owner and I grew up working in his garage. Among the friends of my youth you were in some manner initially judged by your car, I stood out in my first car, an Alfa Romeo, because everybody else was driving '55 Chevys with 327 engines. Cars brought deaths on the summer nights of high speed miscalculations, as well as freedom, your own kingdom on wheels that could, and on many occasions did, take you and your friends to distant exotic places (like the next town down the road.) Out in rural Washington, Idaho or Montana the car or truck is a life line, bringing neighbors and other necessities within easy reach, regardless of miles and stormy weather.

Like most Americans, automobiles have remained woven into my life experience. On everyday errands I watch the elegantly framed landscape continuously unrolling through my car windows. I go few places without involving my old van in the journey.
Many of these photographs use the auto as an element to place you in the car that moves through a thought or place out in the greater west, where the space and spirit of the pioneer seem to still linger.