The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- q17yz
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
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- Publisher
- Aperture Foundation, Inc.
- ISBN
- 9781597112406
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- October
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Campany’s research, ‘The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip,’ has resulted in the photobook accompanied by a major touring exhibition exploring an enduring symbol of American culture. Drawing together broad historical, cultural and photographic knowledge, Campany’s in-depth study presents a new history that places photographers on the move across America and across the last century. Both the publication and exhibition examine the American road trip as a motif that has appeared prominently in literature, music, and movies, but that has had an especially powerful influence on photography.
In the book, Campany theorises the characteristics of the genre in his essay ‘A Short History of the Long Road.’ While each of the 18 chapters, presented chronologically, explores one American road trip through a portfolio of images and informative texts. The book’s format supports the exhibition co-curated with Denise Wolff, which toured the US over two years (2016-18). Campany’s research proposes road trip photography as a genre whose significance is equal to that of road literature and road movies, and through which the perceptual shift of the photographer reframes and critiques the emergence of an American mainstream ideology. The book won the $25000 Alice Award 2015 for the best work of illustrated art history. It has been translated into Spanish and French.
For the accompanying exhibition, Campany co-curated the works of 19 photographers including: Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Berenice Abbott to Robert Frank, Stephen Shore and Victor Burgin, Justine Kurland and Inge Morath. Touring venues for this major exhibition, supported by Aperture, include: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas, (2016), Detroit Institute of Arts, (2016), Amarillo Museum of Art, (2017), Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, (2017), Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, (2018), Milwaukee Art Museum, (2018), Telfair Museums, Savannah, GA, (2018).
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
