Two photographers, Fox and Knorr set out in 2016 on a journey of friendship, adventure and collaboration stopping at motels, drugstores, cafes and Airbnb’s. Stopping, walking, getting out to meet people and explore a fractured US society in the age of Trump. Over 150 colour photographs made between 2016 and 2025 focus on small towns on this extended road trip from KeyWest in Florida to Fort Kent in Maine.

In 1954, photographer Berenice Abbott journeyed along the length of U.S. Route 1. From Florida motels to Maine potato farmers, Abbott memorialised communities up and down the East Coast. During this trip, she shot more than two hundred and fifty 8×10-inch photographs, and around one thousand smaller images using her Rolleiflex camera, representing her largest portfolio of photographs devoted to a single subject. In 2014 after the publication of David Campany’s book, The Open Road: Photography & the American Road Trip, Anna Fox and Karen Knorr decided that they would make a collaborative road trip together based on Berenice Abbott’s Route One.

Following in the tracks of Berenice Abbott and her colleague/assistant Damon Gadd (also accompanied by Sara Gadd), Karen Knorr and Anna Fox set out in 2016 to start a record of contemporary life along U.S. Route 1. during the age of Trump.They started in KeyWest in 2016 and aimed North for Maine, not knowing how long this trip might take.Along the way Fox and Knorr searched for a sense of what is happening today and how that differs from what Abbott and Gadd found. Using their iPhones, digital SLRs and a Phase One medium format camera, they photographed small towns, people, drugstores, cafes, diners, hotels, motels, farms, factories, street signs and advertisements.

There will be a Book Launch launch at The Photographers’ Gallery on 24 July 2024 from 6-8pm. To find out more please go to the direct link.