BROKEN ROADS

Between 2011 and 2012 I hitchhiked, drove and walked 22,000 miles back and forth across the USA. Each day I got up at dawn and drove until dusk. I stopped only to eat, fill up with gas, swim, climb, look, and photograph. When the light of the day was gone, I drove on until I found a motel to sleep for the night.

The work I made then became about the road itself. The open road. A mass of distant, broken factions of society joined together; a continent connected by a concrete life-vein, pumping oil like blood. The road is a place of its own, a separate entity, though it is everywhere. Its pulse is continuous and constant.

The vehicle must rest and refuel, and the driver also. The road persists though, with wildness too. With all the safety offered by signs and signals, danger is abundant. A risk of imminent death lies round every corner. With an arsenal of loaded weapons and itchy trigger fingers all aiming at each other, it's only a matter of who shoots first.

There is something intrinsically lonely about a life on the road. There are intermittent signs of life; cars, houses, shops, service stations, but often no people to be seen. The driver is locked in, tinted windows up, air con pumping. Pull in, refuel with gas, and drive on. Pull in, refuel with food, and drive on. Pull in, refuel with sleep, and drive on. Only when the destination is reached does life take back on its familiar joys and woes, until the next journey.

The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy.

Arthur Miller, Death Of A Salesman