The German photographer captures the vestiges of the America of John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac by crisscrossing the roads of the American Southwest.
Arizona, New Mexico, California… Ralph Gräf invites us on a moving road trip in "Roadside America." It's all the more poignant in light of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires that began on January 7, 2025. This former cell biologist reinvented himself as a brilliant photographer when he left Munich for Potsdam in 2006. Since then, this native of southern Bavaria, passionate about photography since the age of eight, has traveled the world to share his captivating and moving visual narratives. In this series, he captures the ribbons of asphalt in the southwestern United States, immersing us in magnificent desert landscapes, abandoned buildings, and the spirit of rural communities living far from major metropolitan areas.
From city to city
Ralph Gräf began his round-trip journey in 2016, starting in Los Angeles. His route took him from Tucson, Arizona, to White Sands, the world's largest gypsum desert, located in New Mexico. He continued on to the Painted Desert, a magnificent badlands landscape stretching from the Grand Canyon to Petrified Forest National Park. Finally, he traveled along the legendary Route 66 back to his starting point, the City of Angels.
While his images capture the iconic panorama of the American West, the photographer was primarily interested in signs of social upheaval, abandoned architecture (gas stations, motels, restaurants, farms) and almost ghost towns (Bombay Beach on the Salton Sea in Southern California).
"These impressions are particularly intense on Interstate 10 in southern Arizona, but especially along Route 66.", he explains. “This road dates back to 1926 and connected Santa Monica to Chicago. Over time, this single-lane route was replaced by the modern Interstate Highway system. It was removed from the system in 1985, but it is now once again marked as ‘Historic Route 66’ and considered a ‘scenic route’.”
Mythology of America
His series documents the history of the American Southwest along these roads that cut entire villages off from their livelihoods, condemning them to abandonment and decline. Some follow the same route as Route 66. But the latter has become a pure symbol of American freedom, adventure, and nostalgia. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939), which gives it its nickname "Mother Road", to On the road by Jack Kerouac (1957).
Ralph Gräf thus magnificently captures the evolution of highway culture and modernist architecture. His series plays with the interplay of light and shadow, the pale hues between the often heavy sky, the radical and elusive beauty of arid landscapes, and the aged structures of abandoned buildings.
His photograph Gassing Up At Roy's It was notably awarded at the Sony World Photography Awards, bringing together the minimalist aesthetic of the gas station, the retro neon sign, once illuminated, and the desert stretching as far as the eye can see.
