Charting the Rustpiles and Ruins of America's Dream

Charting the Rustpiles and Ruins of America’s Dream

Tumbleweed and dust, neon and rust. Of such are mythologies made.

These once-proud monuments of American culture have now, like the Native Americans, been smashed, neglected, abandoned and bypassed and now lie in haunted ruins, ghosts on Americas once bustling highways.

If not stripped and thrown into scrapyards or taking a last lingering breath as a flop house, the one-time welcoming neon is broken and gone, leaving the highways black and soulless.

– Carl Byron Batson, chasing ghosts and dreams in the dusty plains of an America as much the province of metaphor as landscape.

: Photographer Carl Byron Batson homes in on a lost America

: Photographer Carl Byron Batson homes in on a lost America

: Photographer Carl Byron Batson homes in on a lost America

: Photographer Carl Byron Batson homes in on a lost America

: Photographer Carl Byron Batson homes in on a lost America

: Photographer Carl Byron Batson homes in on a lost America

: Photographer Carl Byron Batson homes in on a lost America

Photos by Carl Byron Batson. Not to be reproduced without express prior permission from the photographer.

Carl Byron Batson

author

Photographer, published poet, former party animal, body builder, grave robber
to the stars and renowned chainsaw juggler, Carl can often be spotted on his
Harley Davidson pretending to be in Terminator 2. He is also frequently seen in
the press pits of old London town, camera in hand, avoiding being hit by bottles
of wee and crippling his opposition with secret Kung Fu moves.

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