In 1954, American photographer Berenice Abbott documented U.S. Route 1, anticipating the profound changes that expanding highway systems would impose on the American landscape. Much of what she photographed has since disappeared, reshaped by private transportation, real estate development, and tourism along the Eastern Seaboard.
Atlantic Coast retraces Abbott’s journey seventy years later, traveling the route in reverse from Florida to Maine. Revisiting the same towns and sites, the project reconsiders Route 1 as both infrastructure and symbol—one tied to American expansionism, mobility, and the promise of the open road.
Photographed in color, the work draws on the visual language of contemporary tourism and commercial imagery, where artifice often blurs the line between reality and illusion. Through layering and juxtaposition, the photographs reflect a landscape shaped by industry, climate change, and displacement, revealing the tension between idealized images of place and lived experience.
Figures appear as both individuals and stand-ins for communities past and present, suggesting continuity, rupture, and the persistence of movement as a defining condition of American life.
