It has been said that artists’ inspiration comes from their everyday life. This is true of this project, The Exits Less Traveled. The interstate played a role in my life in ways that I never thought to be relevant. My father spent many years as an intrastate truck driver in Florida and knew the area like the back of his hand. In turn, my childhood family road trips were filled with a series of starts and stops as we made our annual trips north to West Virginia and south to Key West. The most significant trip, was our month-long summer road trip from Florida to California, which melded by love for the vernacular constructs and the best of the small-town culture that was rapidly fading in the mid-1980s.
The Exits Less Traveled is my own personal discovery of wandering on and off Interstate 4. Exploring the role the interstate plays in shaping and dividing communities, I found that I did not have to look hard to find the fading elements of roadside themes of past decades. These nostalgic signs and structures fade quickly as we witness the homogenizing of the state and provided inspiration for my continued work in roadside photography.
