U.S. Route 1

Stone Crab Traps, Florida
copyright Gordon Stettinius

This past summer I started a new project documenting U.S. Route 1 from Canada to Key West. Essentially, i drove the whole length of road... which runs some 2,300+ miles. The road hits a number of significant metro areas... starting in Richmond, Virginia of course; Baltimore; Philadelphia; Washington D.C.; New York City (through the Bronx), Boston; Miami; Jacksonville; New
Haven; and more. And so the road is part scenic and part sobering reality really and the idea of doing a photo survey seems to me a bit over-reaching. I feel as though I have gone to the ocean and having been impressed I irrationally decided to try to bring it back to the studio.

But... the die is cast as they say. Or the buns burned maybe. So, while I am not sure I am completely finished shooting the project and there are a few things that might still add complexion or color or integrity... I am definitely sitting on top of a mountain of interesting work which is in dire need of sober editing. The first opportunity to exhibit the work is coming up in January 2010 at Robin Rice Gallery, so I am definitely crackling along right now. And I will be showing the work also here in Richmond eventually at Page Bond Gallery though that hasn't been specifically scheduled as yet. And I hope to add additional galleries to the schedule as well and have, I am thinking, at least one other likely exhibition in the works.

I haven't decided how much of the work to put online just yet. For the moment, I am trying to figure out what a show might look like versus how a book might look. There is a lot of analog (film) work and there is a whole lot of digital work. So, the immediate learning curve for me is trying to determine how I want to output the digital work but those are coming along really well. So, more images and information to come as I catch up with the darkroom side of things...

And if you should have a pithy title for the project then let her rip. I am still not quite sure what I want to go with. Whether I want to go with something simple and explicit like "U.S. Route 1 Project" or something more poetic like "The Long and Crinkly Thread of Time and Transportation" or maybe something more cryptic like "Cobalt Wails of Ecstacy" or... Any suggestions would be appreciated.