BORDERLANDS - GAS FOOD LODGING

With ‘Borderlands – Gas Food Lodging’ Nina Vollenbröker and James Santer continue their ongoing exploration of the American cultural landscape. In the summer of 2008 Nina and James travelled the entire length of America’s southernmost interstate, US I10, from Jacksonville, FL, to Los Angeles, CA, and photographically recorded each one of its Service Areas.

The resulting body of work consciously puts a focus on places which are typically experienced in a state of distraction, it makes a precise record of areas which are usually intuitively forgotten: clusters of gas stations, convenience stores, motels, fast food restaurants and the residual spaces that develop between them.

The project interprets the roadside environments of the Service Areas as spatial, temporal and emotional Borderlands; located between movement and stasis, between wakefulness and sleep and between other, more rigorously defined environments. It captures the elements in which the marginal nature of these landscapes become visually apparent and looks at the particular spatial inhabitation they make possible.

All photographs are taken between dusk and dawn and use only the light emitted by the roadside environment itself to portray the landscape. The artificial light becomes a guide to the landscape’s intricacies: it pools on the dew-covered lawn of a motel, the darkening edge of its beam demarcates the boundary of a gas station forecourt, it engulfs a couple’s midnight conversation in an empty restaurant, its radiating electric vapour announces a Service Area’s presence.


The focus of this project is on roadside light: on its ephemeral qualities, on its temporal dimension and on the abrasive beauty of the distinctly American space it illuminates.

The individual photographs explore the Service Areas’ artificial light’s ability to override the subtle specificities of season, weather, locality context and time. They show the particular spatial vocabulary of these continuously available environments, acknowledge their disconnectedness and show their innate bond with the displaced traveller.

As a body of work, the images become a typology which speaks about the spatial, temporal and emotional dimension of Interstate Service Areas. It reflects on their disconnected status created by their location in uninterrupted, absolute time and in the continuum of the Interstate system.