Learning from USA

For half a century, photographer and architectural theorist John Margolies (1940-2016) has been taking inventory of the American roadside. It is here that the vernacular “forgotten formalism” (or sometimes its remnants) sublimates – always towards the West – the legend of the “great outdoors” in the joint rise of the cinema and the automobile. Theaters and drive-ins constitute a saga directly connected to the ribbon of asphalt; but other “decorated sheds” invest our imaginations. Banks to rob, diners, gas stations, trucker bars, motels, casinos or air-conditioned malls and other road movie landscapes project – on both sides of the screen – the script of “another America”: that of our visual culture…