Diesel Fried Chicken
First edition 1000 copies
30cm x 24cm (11.8” x 9.4”)
128 pages 66 colour photos
Published by The Artist Edition 2018
One dark and rainy winter’s night in 1999 I sat at home in London watching a tv show called “This is Modern Art”. The presenter was driving an empty road under a clear blue sky near the high desert town of Marfa, Texas. He was talking about the artist Donald Judd. It was very beautiful and I thought “I want to be there”.
In October 2001 I flew to Los Angeles and drove a rental car through the desert states of the American Southwest to Marfa and then back again following a different route.
I travelled with my camera and a bag of film and took photos along the way. It was a thrilling experience. That trip and those photographs were the beginning of this body of work.
When I returned home I was pleased with the photos and I thought I could make a book but needed to take one more trip to complete it…
Almost seventeen years later, having moved to New York City in 2003, and after a great many more road trips, driving thousands of miles, this is that book.
The mythology of the American road first started to take hold of my imagination in the mid 1970s through reading books, listening to records and watching movies.
Now driving those endless roads, camera by my side, I’m still searching for that mythic country… and sometimes finding it.
I’m not documenting the brutal creeping sprawl of corporate America. I’m seeking the magic that still exists in the spaces in between.
