Road Work - by Andrew Holmes (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

- Andrew Holmes is renowned for his Polaroid photographs of gleaming trucks, and the service infrastructure that sustains the city of Los Angeles - Holmes has made it his life's work to capture scenes from this uniquely American landscape in a series of photographs that now evoke a lost civilization - Road Work presents 500 of Holmes's Los Angeles Polaroids; taken over the past 50 years, they represent an astonishing body of work With Road Work, Andrew Holmes continues his pilgrimage through the seductive litter of modern life. Cities are conventionally viewed as static objects, but a third of Los Angeles is on the move; it is a kaleidoscope trapped in a grid, where what you see is what you drive past. Road Work presents 500 of Andrew Holmes' Los Angeles Polaroids, capturing the machines that deliver people and goods to different parts of the city each day. These vehicles are seen at the airport, at a truck stop, always in a parking bay, set classically against azure skies, frozen like statues in a Renaissance garden. Everything has equal status. Nothing transgresses the grid. The work is even, chrome and rust are its soul. Along with commentaries by David Greene and Holmes himself, Road Work includes lyrics by Chuck Berry and others, and extracts from a variety of road novelists and writers.

About the Author

Andrew Holmes (b. 1947) is Emeritus Professor of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University. He was formerly Guest Professor at the Technische Universität, Berlin, and a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute. For many years he was an innovative and inspiring tutor at the Architectural Association. He lives and works in London.