The German photographer captures remnants of the America of John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac as he crisscrosses the roads of the American Southwest.
Arizona, New Mexico, California... Ralph Gräf invites us on a moving road trip in "Roadside America". All the more so since the devastating fires in Los Angeles, which began on January 7, 2025. This former cell biology scientist became a brilliant photographer when he moved from Munich to Potsdam in 2006. Since then, this native of southern Bavaria, who has been an avid photographer since the age of 8, has criss-crossed the globe, bringing his captivating and poignant visual tales to life. In this series, he takes to the asphalt ribbons of the American Southwest, immersing us in the magnificent desert landscapes, abandoned buildings and spirit of the rural community living far from major metropolitan areas.
From town to town
Ralph Gräf began his round trip from Los Angeles in 2016. His journey took him from Tucson, Arizona, to White Sands, the world's largest gypsum desert in New Mexico. He continued on to Painted Desert, a magnificent badlands landscape stretching from the Grand Canyon to Petrified Forest National Park. Then it took the legendary Route 66 back to its starting point, the City of Angels.
While his images capture the iconic panorama of the American West, the photographer's main focus is on signs of social upheaval, abandoned architecture (gas stations, motels, restaurants, farms) and near-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. "The latter dates back to 1926 and linked Santa Monica to Chicago. Over time, this single-track road was replaced by the modern interstate highway system. It was removed from the network in 1985, but is now once again marked as Historic Route 66 and considered a Scenic Byway."
Mythology of America
His series documents the history of the American Southwest along roads that cut off entire villages from their livelihoods, condemning them to abandonment and decline. Some follow the same route as Route 66. From John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (1939), which gave the road its nickname of "Mother Road", to Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), it has become a pure symbol of American freedom, adventure and nostalgia.
Ralph Gräf beautifully captures the evolution of highway culture and modernist architecture. His series plays with the play of light and shadow, the pale hues between the often overcast sky, the radical, elusive beauty of arid landscapes and the weathered structures of buildings left to decay.
His photograph Gassing Up At Roy's won a Sony World Photography Award, bringing together the gas station's minimalist aesthetic, the retro neon sign, once illuminated, and the desert as far as the eye can see.
