At the Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles, contemporary America resonates with that of yesterday in an exhibition: "US Route 1," which juxtaposes the work of contemporary photographers Anna Fox and Karen Knorr with the earlier work of Berenice Abbott. This work also echoes an iconic film: Route One/USA by Robert Kramer (1989).
It's one of the oldest roads in the United States. It runs the entire length of the East Coast, from south to north, from Key West, at the tip of the Florida Keys, to Fort Kent, Maine, on the banks of the St. Lawrence River and the Canadian border; 3810 kilometers of asphalt, first traveled in 1954 by American photographer Berenice Abbott with the aim of creating a picture book showcasing the contrasts and diversity of the communities that populate the country. More than sixty years later, photographers Anna Fox and Karen Knorr retraced Abbott's steps, documenting American life in the heart of the 2010s through the lens of the people who live along Route 1 and the towns and cities it passes through. The exhibition presented at the Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles juxtaposes these two photographic projects. We can thus note the socio-economic and aesthetic evolution of the same space, from Eisenhower's America to Obama's and then Trump's, from differences to similarities.
But between these two Americas, these two photographic projects, and these two Route 1s, there is another. In 1989, Robert Kramer, an American filmmaker who had left the United States many years earlier, decided to return to his native country and travel down the famous Route One from north to south. The result was a strange cinematic object: Route One/USA, a sprawling documentary of over four hours into which fiction subtly intrudes. As in the exhibition presented in Arles, Robert Kramer's film begins, after a short introductory sequence, with a road map. There is no true road trip without a map, which allows one to project oneself into the journey, to anticipate, to see the route to be taken, the stops not to be missed. And it is no coincidence that Robert Kramer, for his return home, takes a road trip. Nor is it a coincidence that Abbott, like Fox and Knorr, decides to tell the story of the United States through a long car journey. The concept of the road trip belongs to America, land of wide open spaces and the automotive industry, just like its other symbols, the bald eagle or the Star Spangled Banner – which, moreover, appear frequently in the contemporary images of Fox and Knorr.
Another American road has more often inspired fantasies and desires for road trips: Route 66, which begins on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago and ends in the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, 3670 kilometers away. This road tells a different story, that of the conquest of the West, but also of the Great Depression. It traverses two distinct American geographical and cultural realities: the Midwest and West CoastRoute 1 (which, contrary to what one might think, is longer than Route 66) also crosses cultural spaces marked by sociological differences, but whose resonance is made even stronger by the history of the United States: the North and the South. Route 1 is not only a historic route because it is old, but because it follows the old path of the first road that connected the thirteen original colonies of the Declaration of Independence of 1776, passing "through all the old capitals," as Robert Kramer recounts in the voiceover of his documentary.
And then, the development of road infrastructure at the beginning of the 20th centurye The 20th century rendered Route 1 obsolete. While it hasn't been officially decommissioned (unlike Route 66, which ceased to exist officially in 1985), it's now rarely used, except for short trips between small towns. And that's also what interests Kramer, as well as Abbott, Fox, and Knorr: Small Town America, the America of small towns, somewhat forgotten far from the capitals and major highways. "It's a small town, and you can never be too careful." »“I’m wary of strangers,” testifies a policewoman not far from Fort Kent, who films her in Robert Kramer’s documentary. Without necessarily realizing it, the filmmaker uses the same method as the photographers exhibited in Arles: focusing on the inhabitants, their appearance, their faces, but also on the buildings that stand along the road, from a Victorian mansion on a former plantation to foggy gas stations. They, too, are witnesses to an American story.
Berenice Abbott, Anna Fox and Karen Knorr,
"US ROUTE 1"
Arles Photography Encounters
Archbishop's Palace, Arles
Until 5 October 2025
rencontres-arles.com
Route One/USA by Robert Kramer
Available in a DVD and Blu-ray box set, published by Re:Voir
