Beginning with the government’s failed response to the
flooding of New Orleans in 2005, the American people
suffered through a series of devastating corruptions of their
traditional structures of support. Stranded is a meditation on
the despondence of the American psyche as this collapse of
certainty left the country stuck in an unfamiliar space between
distress and relief.
Stranded
ByAmy Stein
In this series the car serves as both figurate symbol of American destiny
and a literal representation of the personal breakdowns on the road
to that promise.
In this series the car serves as both figurate symbol of American destiny
and a literal representation of the personal breakdowns on the road
to that promise. The images live in the road photography tradition
of Robert Frank, Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld, but where they
sought to capture the American experience through “the journey,” my
photographs seek to tell the story of this time through the journey
interrupted.
I have spent the past five plus years driving across America photographing
stranded motorists. Finding subjects is a matter of chance and every
encounter is tense because of the unusual circumstances of our
interaction and the inherent danger.