I began work on a photography project in May. I’ve been anxiously awaiting the moment I could finally show you what I’ve been working on, and tonight’s the night.
Welcome to Places Between Places: The Louisville Roads Project!
Purpose
The focal point of this project is the major roadways of Louisville, Kentucky. I wanted to highlight why they are so important for our city, and to uncover facets of the past that might have been forgotten or overlooked.
With this project, I hope to provide a means for people to appreciate and reconnect with their surroundings. In doing so, my hope is that these photos clarify and bring context to the present day.
Context
Places Between Places is my first photography project, and it came out of nowhere. When I started down this road, my intent was to unearth historical tidbits of interest about a select few locations in Louisville. In working to complete the photography and research for this project, I went places I never expected, both figuratively and literally.
This project is about my rediscovery of my love for history, my growth as an artist and a woman, and is ultimately the story of my reconnection with the world around me after far too long.
Places Between Places is a love letter to the open road, to adventure, to history, to joy and hope, to this period of my life and the people I share it with. It means a great deal to me.
Funk Gets Stronger
The catalyst for what eventually became Places Between Places was a sign at Louisville International Airport. It was August 7th 2016, early on Sunday morning. I’d just left my brother’s birthday party, and I was in the mood to drive. I wrote an essay about this moment the next day, and I’m going to quote from it here:
At this point, I’m sitting at the light on Crittenden Drive, Watterson Expressway East to my left, and the post office immediately to my right. I wanted to get onto the Watterson, and the onramp was to my left, so naturally I go straight, thinking that maybe I’d just drive all night if that’s what I decided I wanted to do.
It ended up being about 3 more seconds. There were a crapload of barriers there and a fence where Crittenden Drive would once have continued, where I think I remember driving but who even knows. Immediately on the other side of those barriers and the fence was Louisville International Airport. I sat for a second, all alone, staring at the “ROAD CLOSED PERMANENTLY” sign and re-evaluating my life choices.
That sign, a sign protected by concrete barriers at the airport that I only saw because I got lost, changed my life.
I turned around, got onto the Watterson, and went home, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that sign. I wasn’t sure whether it was the reflection of the lights, the absurdity of waiting alone at a stoplight to continue onto a road that no longer existed, or the fact that I could still see Crittenden Drive’s ghost there beyond the barriers and the fence, but there was something about that moment beneath the lights of Louisville International Airport that wouldn’t leave me alone.
The next day, I decided to write an essay about it. At the time, I didn’t know what else to do, and I was feeling more than a little silly about it. I’d never intentionally decided to do that before, to capture something in writing in an attempt to get it out of my mind. I’d also never realized until then how critical images sometimes were to my writing. Both became fundamental facets of my writing process, and I’m not sure it would ever have happened if it hadn’t been for that sign. The resulting essay remains one of my very favorites.
I’ve been a writer, to one degree or another, nearly my entire life, and have been writing continuously for a little over 15 years now. It wasn’t until a little over a decade ago that I began intentionally working to hone and improve my technique, but after that night in 2016, everything changed. I kept writing, and I produced numerous essays that I thought were decent, but the visual component began to loom larger and larger in my mind. Eventually, some of my work began to feel incomplete without photos to accompany them. I was really hesitant to incorporate photos, though, because I know so many people who regularly produce amazing photos. I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of people who actually knew what they were doing, and I didn’t want to lower the quality of my writing, but I knew I needed to start somewhere.
In early 2017 I started my website and began posting reviews, poetry, and essays. I didn’t always include photos, and it took a few months before I was willing to use a photo that I’d taken myself, but I was relieved to have finally started. By this time, I could feel that something was changing, even though I wasn’t sure what it was.
That was the summer I turned 30 years old. When I think about that day, I remember rain, Dippin’ Dots, and a cherry Slush Puppie, 3 of my favorite things. The next day, I drove to Cincinnati and jumped out of a plane with a complete stranger strapped to my back. He had a parachute. The day after that, I celebrated my birthday at a party surrounded by friends, people who love and have supported me so much.
2 days later, I loaded up my car and drove to North Myrtle Beach. That night, I stood in the ocean surrounded by thunder and lightning, feeling the pull of the elements and the electric air around me, and I have never felt stronger or more powerful in my life. I’m fairly certain I could’ve harnessed that electricity and zapped someone with it. I went back to my room and zapped half a pizza.
By the end of the summer, it was very clear to me that something had changed, that I had to do something and that it was time to make a move. 4 months after that night in the surf at North Myrtle Beach, I began stand-up comedy.
The summer of 2018 was another of my favorites. By this time I was regularly producing pictures I was happy with, and there was a whole lot to capture. My summer began in Greensburg, Kentucky on the evening of April 21st, celebrating the wedding of beloved friends. I was so keyed up afterward that I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep for several hours, so I loaded up my car and drove back to Louisville that night. The drive home was pretty quick and easy, you start West on Cumberland Parkway, follow it all the way to the end, exit onto I-65 North, and take it all the way home. The moon wouldn’t be full for another week, but it was already captivating on that night. I drove, drank my Cokes, and I suddenly realized how little I really knew about the state I was born and raised in, how many tiny towns there are here, and the fact that until that night, if I noticed those tiny places at all, I’d have thought of them only as something you see while on your way to something else.
Until that night, I saw them only as places between places.
Places Between Places: The Louisville Roads Project was born that night, while I was honking down Cokes and driving back to Louisville. Shooting for it started 2 weeks later.
What Now?
Unless otherwise necessary, all content for this project (with the exception of this companion essay) will be posted publicly on Instagram with the relevant contextual information, and crossposted from there. Each post will contain the #placesbetweenplaces hashtag, as well as the #louisvilleroadsproject hashtag.
This series is not yet complete, and I expect it to be open-ended. As with many of my interests, as I deepened my research for this project, I uncovered more and more that I wanted to capture. I’ll also be posting a few outtakes and sidecar photos that I loved, but that don’t quite fit within the main project.
I learned a lot about the rudimentary elements of photography in shooting these photos, and as I learned, I improved a bit. The photographic style I’m cultivating is very similar to my writing style: hyperdistilled, dense, unvarnished, filterless, and authentic, imperfections and all. With the benefit of the additional knowledge and possibly some improved equipment, I plan to revisit several of the original sites and shoot them again. That said, my photography is just as much about capturing the moment and the way it feels as it is about capturing the way it looks, so I strongly prefer using the original version of a shot.
I began shooting Places Between Places 8 months ago, and the biggest reason I waited so long to discuss or share it is the very same reason that I must. I didn’t want to publish it until it was complete and perfect, but that is the exact opposite of the point of this project.
The point of this project is to chronicle the personal and artistic growth of a young woman on the road, a young woman navigating a joyful, exciting, chaotic, terribly confusing, exhilarating portion of her life.
For most, roads are only a conduit, a liminal space between where they are now and their destination.
For me, roads are the destination. For me, the road is the way.