Curated by Gaëlle Morel
Exhibition produced by Rencontres d’Arles in collaboration with The Image Centre, Toronto
Between July and September 1954, American photographer Berenice Abbott, accompanied by her assistants and drivers, Damon and Sara Gadd, traveled along Route 1, the oldest highway in the United States, stretching from Fort Kent, Maine, at the Canadian border, to the Florida Keys. Originally laid out to connect the thirteen original colonies and soon bypassed by the growing interstate highway system, Route 1 offered, according to Abbott, “a realistic vision of a representative cross-section of American life.” With the idea of a photobook in mind, she documented the diversity of communities, landscapes, and architecture encountered from Maine to Florida. Abbott also highlighted the increasing impact of the automobile industry on consumerism, leisure, and tourism, alluding to the growing standardization of the mid-century American landscape. Despite preparing a book dummy and a promotional document to persuade publishers, Abbott’s photographic endeavor along U.S. Route 1 was never published and remains relatively unknown to this day.
Between 2016 and 2019, following in the footsteps of Berenice Abbott and her two collaborators, photographers Anna Fox and Karen Knorr set out on the road, traveling from Key West to Atlanta, then from Washington to Atlanta. They later visited New York, Rhode Island, and Providence (in 2017), Baltimore and Philadelphia (in 2022), and finally Maine, before returning to Florida (in 2023–2024). With the same ambition as Abbott’s overlooked project, Fox and Knorr explore the role of Route 1 today—now a less-traveled highway—and document the cultural, social, and environmental conditions of contemporary America. On the road, using a range of formats and technological tools, from the iPhone to a large-format camera, they photograph small towns, communities, pharmacies, cafés, motels, and restaurants. Begun during Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, Fox and Knorr’s series highlights the effects of the country’s conservative policies on women’s and minority rights, economically disadvantaged groups, gun control, and the intensification of police brutality. Paying tribute to Abbott’s unfinished endeavor, the two artists’ vibrant investigation along Route 1 extends and keenly updates the in-depth photographic study of a “fraction of the ‘American scene.’”
— Gaëlle Morel
