- Atlanta, Georgia-based photographer Joshua Dudley Greer has spent the last seven years taking road trips across America and photographing along the 46,876-mile-long Interstate Highway System.
- Greer felt that exploring the Interstate Highway System, which he calls "a physical manifestation of our national character," would give him the best understanding of what America is today. Along the way, he saw and captured many strange, beautiful moments that he calls "minor miracles."
- Greer has collected his years of work road tripping and photographing America's highways into "Somewhere Along the Line," to be published early next year. He's running a Kickstarter where people can pre-order the book until November 12.
Ever since the US began constructing the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s, the road has become a central part of America's myth of itself, and its reality.
In large part, the 46,876 miles of superhighways have dictated the development of America's culture and economy of suburbs, malls, and corporate franchises. The uniformity of the road system has encouraged the uniformity of American life. Stop off any exit along Interstate 95 or Interstate 80 and you are likely to find a similar collection of strip malls, diners, gas stations, and fast food joints. It's why most Americans just keep driving.
Atlanta, Georgia-based photographer Joshua Dudley Greer had a different idea. Instead of jetting down the road, Greer drove along America's highways at a crawl and tried to photograph exceptions to the sameness such as, in his words, "a man cooking ribs at a truck stop for eighteen hours or a billboard asking for someone to donate a kidney."
For seven years and over 100,000 miles of driving, Greer tried to capture the strange, mysterious, and beautiful moments he found along the Interstate Highway System, in the hopes that it might help him understand what America is today.
"I think the big highways can be seen as a physical manifestation of our national character — economically, politically, socially, and environmentally," Greer told Business Insider. "We’re at a point where our infrastructure is long past its shelf life and is crumbling all around us and yet we continue to either band-aid the problem or look the other way."
A book of Greer's near-decade-long exploration of America's highways, titled "Somewhere Along the Line," will be published by German publisher Kehrer Verlag early next year.
Greer recently launched a Kickstarter to take preorders of the book, which will run until November 12. You can check it out here and see some of his photos below.
SEE ALSO: A photographer spent 17 years exploring the empty landscape of Mongolia and nearly froze to death
The US began construction of the Interstate Highway System in 1956 under President Dwight Eisenhower.
Source:Federal Highway Administration
While numerous highways predated the system, the IHS was the first standardized system of superhighways in the country.
Source:Federal Highway Administration
Ever since, the Interstate Highway System has had a huge impact on America's culture and development. It set in stone that the car was the center of America's culture and economy.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider