---
title: See Photos of Cool American Road Trips
description: These Photos Take You for a Ride
canonical: https://time.com/3811996/road-trip-america-photobook/
author: Myles Little
article:opinion: false
article:content_tier: free
article:published_time: 2014-09-24T08:00:31.000Z
article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:40:21.183Z
article:section: World
og:title: Go on a Road Trip Across America with these Beautiful Photos
og:description: These Photos Take You for a Ride
og:url: https://time.com/3811996/road-trip-america-photobook/
og:site_name: TIME
og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta71f086c9f961eb6/6987e7e035ba6f404bc0a7f7/openroad_01_hires.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9
og:image:width: 1200
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og:image:alt: OPENROAD_01_hires
og:type: article
twitter:card: summary_large_image
twitter:title: Go on a Road Trip Across America with these Beautiful Photos
twitter:description: These Photos Take You for a Ride
twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta71f086c9f961eb6/6987e7e035ba6f404bc0a7f7/openroad_01_hires.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9
---
# Go on an American Road Trip with the World's Greatest Photographers
by
[Myles Little](/author/myles-little/)
## Myles Little
Sep 24, 2014 8:00 AM CUT
Outside Memphis, Tennessee, 1960
Outside Memphis, Tennessee, 1960Inge Morath—Magnum Photos
by
[Myles Little](/author/myles-little/)
## Myles Little
Sep 24, 2014 8:00 AM CUT
“Our country is made for long trips,” the photographer Stephen Shore once mused, a statement proven true in The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip published by [Aperture](http://www.aperture.org/openroad "undefined") next month.
As its writer David Campany explains, the idea of the road as a place of freedom and discovery has been with us for years. In fact, it was the 19th-century poet Walt Whitman who gave us the admiring phrase “the open road.”
For photographers, perhaps the most mobile of all artists, the road is a natural home.
The first masterpiece of the road trip genre was Walker Evans’ 1938 MoMA exhibit and book “[American Photographs](http://lightbox.time.com/2012/08/15/walker-evans-american-photographs/ "undefined").” Made over the course of a decade of travel across the eastern half of the US, it is a plain-spoken but quietly artful statement about everyday people, architecture and signage during a time of hardship.
In its early years, the possibilities of the road seemed endless. “Futurama: Highways and Horizons”, an exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair (financed by General Motors), envisioned a utopia where workers zipped along mega-highways between the industrious city and the sparkling suburbs.
Indeed, the short term transformations were breathtaking. The country built countless news cars and roads to drive them on, as well as innumerable fast food joints, motels and gas stations.
But it would take years to understand the deeper changes this would bring to the cultural landscape of the country.
Interstate highways helped mobilize and mix Americans as never before, and a national monoculture slowly overtook regional subcultures.
Artists would spend much of the 50s, 60s and 70s responding to this. As Campany writes, “boredom and repetition became the new muses.” Ed Ruscha’s 1963 book “Twentysix Gasoline Stations” is a deadpan index of—you guessed it—26 gasoline stations. (Ironically, Campany notes, “today, people love that book for its period charm!”)
Meanwhile, soaring traffic fatalities, pollution and congestion helped further tarnish the myth.
The anxiety and alienation of the new age found its ultimate expression in Robert Frank’s 1959 road trip book “The Americans”, a highly personal response to the commercial excess, racial animosity and loneliness he saw in his adopted country.
By the 1970s and 80s, the grand idea of the road had shrunken into cliche. In the work of both Stephen Shore and [Mitch Epstein](http://lightbox.time.com/2011/03/17/mitch-epstein-wins-the-prix-pictet-photography-prize/ "undefined"), Campany writes, “we sense both the photographer and his subjects feeling their way through America as image.”
Today, he says “even the more classically minded contemporary photographers \[like Vanessa Winship, Alec Soth and Justine Kurland\] are \[…\] fully aware that to even set out on the road with a camera is to summon a well-established history of American photography.”
These photographers include Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs, who use humorous and absurd interventions to toy with our notions of the road. And even the artist [Doug Rickard](http://lightbox.time.com/2012/10/24/street-view-and-beyond-googles-influence-on-photography/ "undefined") knows the history of the genre well, even though he doesn’t actually take road trips, using Google Street View instead. “All is here,” Campany writes of the work, “from the early thrills of what a new technology can show of familiar and strange subjects, to the existential crises, the euphoric interludes, the unexpected moments of poetic grace and polemic, and the unknown.”
Thus, in this genre—like on any of America’s epic highways—a bend in the road reveals not an end, but yet another vista.
---
[**The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip**](http://www.aperture.org/openroad/ "undefined") _is published by Aperture._
**_Myles Little_** _is an associate photo editor at TIME._
---
![\[Young Couple in Parked Open-Air Car, Ossining, New York\], 1932–34
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art](https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt203baf6ba5aa80b4/6987e92ccd6848da7c09d515/or_016_evans.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp)
\[Young Couple in Parked Open-Air Car, Ossining, New York\], 1932–34 © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Walker Evans
House and Billboards, Atlanta, 1936 Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Walker Evans
Outside Memphis, Tennessee, 1960 Inge Morath—Magnum Photos
Golden Nugget, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1960 Inge Morath—Magnum Photos
Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1962 © Ed Ruscha, courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Dealey Plaza, Dallas, 1964 © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Garry Winogrand
Florida, 1970 Courtesy of the artist and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York Joel Meyerowitz
Alabama Jacob Holdt, courtesy of the artist
Untitled, (Lost and Found), 1972 © Eggleston Artistic Trust/Aperture William Eggleston
Untitled (Los Alamos Portfolio), 1965-74 © Eggleston Artistic Trust/Aperture William Eggleston
Washington Street, Struthers, Ohio, October 27, 1977 Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York Stephen Shore
Pennington Street, Tucson, Arizona, December 17, 1976 Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York Stephen Shore
Miami Beach I, Florida 1976 Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York Mitch Epstein
Untitled (From the series American Roulette), 1988 Shinya Fujiwara
Claire, 8th Ward, 2012 Courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery, New York Justine Kurland
#6097, 2007 Courtesy the artist and Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, Calilfornia Todd Hido
Laura (Thunderstorm), 2007 Ryan McGinley, courtesy of Team Gallery
Broken Street Line, 2008 Courtesy the artist and RaebervonStenglin, Zurich and Peter Lav, Copenhagen Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs
Deer on Highway Embankment, Buffalo, New York, November 4, 2012 Vanessa Winship
#26.688235, Belle Glade, FL (2007), 2010 From the series A New American Picture Doug Rickard, courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
#83.016417, Detroit, MI (2009), 2010 From the series A New American Picture Doug Rickard, courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
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