In Search of America: Photography and the Road Trip

Intertwined since the very beginning, the camera and the car revolutionized modern life in America.

This photography exhibition at the Saint Louis Art Museum displays artistic work shaped primarily by car travel in the 20th century, exploring how the automobile and the road mediated what the photographers discovered. Themes include Depression-era documentary work, roadside culture, utopian impulses of escape and fascination with the desert Southwest.

Significant figures include Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander.

Vernacular photographs as well as books will also be on view, and the exhibition will include a significant display of work by Emil Otto Hoppé, whose 1926 travels generated the first comprehensive survey of the American landscape.