Lighting Out for the Territory
From the late 1950's through the early 1970s Martin C. Johnson took a number of road trips criss-crossing the country from his home in Suburban Chicago to both coasts and all points in between. For each trip he put together a slide show to document his travels. Judging from these shows he (and his wife who must be responsible for at least some of the photographs) was far more interested in the road itself than wherever his final destination might have been. For every photograph of Mount Rushmore or The Grand Canyon there were three or four shots of the empty (or not so empty) road taken through the windshield of the car. For every shot of friends and relatives visited there were two of the motels he stayed in on the way. In doing so Johnson has left behind an invaluable record of the golden age of auto travel- an era when the new interstate highway system had opened up the country but before the development it brought had homogenized it.