Upon his arrival in the United States some 36 years ago, Rudy VanderLans (co-founder of Emigre) embarked on a pan-American trip in a Greyhound bus from New York to California. Overwhelmed by the experience, he rarely took out his camera, feeling unprepared for the challenge to capture and do justice to the visual overload of the American environment.
In 2016 he setout to retrace his route, this time with camera in hand and a determination to record the experience. If the work seems familiar at times, VanderLans is quick to name his influences. Its through the photographs of Ruscha,Shore, Friedlander, Eggleston, and others, that I learned to look at America more discerningly, says VanderLans. I use their examples as a jumping off point to distill my own impressions.
The haunting photographs that resulted from VanderLans journey form the second body of work in a trilogy of books that began with Still Lifes, California. VanderLans publishes his photographs exclusively in book form, and these postcards from the road evoke both tranquility and solitude, entropy and loneliness in equal measures.
