Many, many communities were altered by the immense interstate system in LA. I focused photographing in 3 specific areas. Here a house backs onto the highways where the 10, 110, 5 and 60 all converge.
Blog: Interstate Legacy Across America
From Jan - April 2022 my husband and I are traveling across America to photograph cities included in The Yellow Book. I am making a photographic survey of how the interstate altered these cities, 66 years later. Please see the tab for The Yellow Book to learn more about this project.
Phoenix, Arizona
I found it really hard to photograph here. Such an immense city, and nothing remaining of previous communities where the highway now lays.
Tucson, arizona
Finally made it to the second Yellow Book city on our trip, Tucson AZ. Tucson unlike many cities does not have a ring road. In the video you can see the Catalina Foothills (the mountains in the background) a wealthy neighborhood that prevented any highway being built there. Instead there is only a highway running north and south on the west side.
Tucson is expected to increase its population to 1.5 million by 2040. This excessive growth means more and more houses are being built outwards, and along the 1-10. Here you can see from inside a new house and suburb, the interstate right in their backyards.
Car camping
A little bit nervous doing this, but it is working out great. Joey built a platform in the back of the car, and a cargo carrier on top. Rest areas, national forests and BLM sites are all available to us.
San antonio, texas
Day 1, first stop was San Antonio, TX. Much like the neighborhood of Edgehill, Nashville we found that right beside the highway has been gentrified with massive rows of condos. Squeezed in between these you can see few original homes still standing.
Jan 17 - Take off!
And here we go….!
For the next 4 months, Joey and I will be traveling the path outlined on our map to photograph cities included in The Yellow Book.
The Yellow Book is a nickname given to the General Location of National System of Interstate Highways 1955. This book was used as an outline for where interstates were to be built in every city with a population of over 50,000 people in the United States - 104 cities in total. I am photographing each of these cities to create a survey of the consequences of the interstate highway system. Many cities used them to reinstate racial divides after desegregation, many built them directly through thriving Black communities. Some cities successfully stopped the building of highways to protect their parks. Others have now gentrified becoming sought-out neighborhoods due to close proximities to downtowns.
I’ll be photographing each city looking at where the interstate was placed, and how it affected the community it was built through. I’ll be posting updates here on the trip, photographs of my project in process, and what we learn as we go.
