Approaching Nowhere: Photographs (2006) – Jeff Brouws
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Jeffrey T. Brouws (born 1955) is an American photographer whose work captures the social experience and cultural relevance of classic American iconic images, from highway landscapes of run-down motels and neon-lit gas stations to carnival scenes of small-town sideshows. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Brouws [Oct 2006]

Synopsis
Like many Americans who grew up during the spread of sprawl – with its predictable landscape of housing developments, shopping malls, interstate highways and big-box construction – acclaimed photographer Jeff Brouws is drawn to places that still embody the vernacular past as well as to those that starkly portray the soulless, franchised American landscape. This collection of evocative images of buildings and places seen from the American road began as a cultural geography of Main Streets and became a visual critique of the myth of upward mobility that created this car-centred, paved-over universe. Some images look outward to the edges of suburbia where sprawl is encroaching upon nature. Others turn inward, documenting the devastated inner cities. All of them reflect the complex beauty and desolation of visual life in America today.