Making Room posted a great interview and collection of work from Amy Stein, a photographer who turned her attention to the roadways in search of documenting stranded motorists in a new project titled Stranded.
Stranded, Photograph copyright Amy Stein
In Davin Risk’s interview, Amy talks about how the project evolved.
The seeds of the project were planted during hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. I was sitting in my living room watching live images of people stuck on their roofs as the water was rising around them. I remember thinking that a lot of these people were living in poverty and had been for generations, but it required them taking to their roof and writing “help” in big bold letters on live television before we paid attention. In those moments I began to examine my own apathy and the broader decline in American civic engagement.
During this same time I was making frequent car trips to Pennsylvania for my Domesticate project. Along the way I would pass cars that had broken down on the side of the road and really pay only minimal attention. After a while I started noticing the people stranded and standing next to the car. I began to slow down and try to see their faces and their expressions. They had that same dazed and shaken expression as the people on their roofs in New Orleans. I immediately wanted to pull over and capture these moments of personal isolation.
Stranded, Photograph copyright Amy Stein
I like this project for the originality and how it seems to communicate the universal feelings of loneliness, disappointment, and fear of being stranded far from home. Those are passive feelings that I think we all harbor when we’re on a long trip. Driving through Kentucky a few weeks ago, a family in a Jeep eagerly passed me on the highway. The driver angrily looked at me for not driving fast enough. A few miles down the road, the same Jeep was parked on the highway with steam billowing from the hood. The look on the driver’s face was fearful and disappointed. That memory relates and connects me with Amy’s project.
Stranded, Photograph copyright Amy Stein
Make sure to read the rest of Making Room’s interview and other projects here. Also, check out Amy’s blog, and her outstanding (and that is an understatement) conceptual essay, Domesticated. Personally, I think Domesticated is one of the strongest conceptual essays out there right now.
Domesticated, photograph copyright Amy Stein.
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