The road, especially the idea of the American road, grabbed my attention first through movies. Watching and reading characters traverse the expansive open road as they underwent transformation appealed to my curiosity in ways I never understood.

As a young college student looking to build my own identity, I found in the road movie a type of film that was comparable to the Westerns my dad loved and showed me (wide open spaces and discovery, albeit self-discovery). Subconsciously, it was similar, but its own thing.

I have read a lot about how the road represents the promise of freedom and adventure, individualism and loneliness. When I try to square those academic thoughts with my own feelings, I end up both disagreeing and agreeing, the sentiment often changing from day to day.

My first real interaction with the road as a young adult was grabbing buses from New York City to visit family and friends along the East Coast. Back then, those bus rides to DC, Baltimore, and Richmond didn’t really excite my imagination.

Fast forward to 2020, when my companion and I took a trip from New York to Oklahoma, Colorado, South Dakota, and Ohio. It was during that trip that my infatuation with the liminal space that is the open road took hold. Maybe it had to do with growing up and experiencing some ups and downs that I could reflect on. Maybe it was the drastic change in landscape. Like the characters in the road movies I watched, time on the road was just as much a time of internal discovery. Brought on by highway hypnosis, the rhythm of the moving car put me in a trance-like state long enough to think about my life up to that moment, to dream about the future.

During my internal wandering, moments arose when I found myself taking pictures of what I was seeing. Not the driver; I had ample opportunity to capture these moments between the daydreams and podcasts, the music and the relative silence. This series is a collection of the punctured moments.

Since 2020, I have spent over 100 hours on the road, a relatively short time compared to the amount of time spent living, but a period that feels longer due to the replaying of moments from my past and projections into the future. All throughout, camera nearby to capture moments that break through the spell.