J.W. Burleson photo / Boquillas del Carmen, Coah.
Friday, August 3, 2012
George R. Stewart & US Highway 40
Has anyone out there read George R Stewart? His book US 40 was a narrative, with photographs, of an auto trip across the United States on US Highway 40, from San Francisco to New Jersey, in 1952. He had a good clear eye for landscape and roads and architecture, especially for the way the US landscape had been changed and organized around the automobile....Stewart was one of the first to look at ordianry, vernacular, roadside America. I followed his trail 50 years later and tried to duplicate the exact frames of as many of his photographs as I could. I plan to scan these, and will start putting them up, as they are very close to the heart of what Autoliterate is all about, whatever and wherever that is. I guess it's mostly about paying attention.
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Just stumbled across this and thought I'd comment. "US 40" is one of my favorite books and, like you, I followed some of his route and snapped photos some 40+ years after his journey. We're not the only two with that idea. One couple actually published a complete work called "US 40 Today" in 1983. A few years back, another guy was trying to get funding over the internet to do it yet again - he was using modern technology to take photos from the exact same location whenever possible. Don't know if anything came of that effort. Best regards....
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