U.S.80
Alexander Shields & William Eckersley
See project here!
U.S. 80, the Southern Pacific, was the first coast-to-coast highway in America, pre-dating even the fabled Route 66. Spanning nearly 3,000 miles, it runs between Savannah, Georgia and San Diego, California and covers an enormous diversity of the American landscape and culture – including rural southlands, scarred by civil war and civil rights, boom towns of Texas enriched with oil surplus, and creeping scarcity as scrubland gives way to the western deserts along the Mexican border.
Over the course of three visits between 2008 and 2009, photographers Alexander Shields and William Eckersley meticulously documented the road and its environs using only medium and large format film stock. U.S.80 beautifully presents their photographs of this potent landscape and its people, with a foreword by the renowned journalist and broadcaster Jon Snow.
Spectator – “Eckersley and Shields have vividly captured the atmosphere of both place and people… This unusual collection of Americana is not to be missed.”
Jon Snow – “It is the light that somehow defines the South. It is immediate, uninterrupted and full of purple shadow at either end of the day. Illuminating the extraordinary landscape of this region, it is captured with poignancy in these photographs.”
Published August 2010
Photographs by Alexander Shields & William Eckersley
Foreword by Jon Snow
176 pages
131 colour photographs
280 x 240 mm
Hardback with sewn binding
Full colour offset printing
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-9553143-1-5
Available in the following bookshops: Artwords, Brick Lane Books, Daunt, Donlon, Foyles, Magma, Photographer’s Gallery, RIBA, Serpentine Bookshop, Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery and via Paypal below