Everything is flat and empty here

I’ve been back in Omaha for a few days and have begun the task of going through all of the images I created during my road trip last week. After every trip like this, I go through cycles of both satisfaction and unhappiness with what I managed to capture. At the moment, I’m mostly on board with the bulk of what I see in the images.

Texas was the last part of the American portion of the Great Plains that I had yet to explore. These photographs will ultimately be part of a larger project that I have been working on for a number of years now, something that is either almost finished or needs more thought.

I’ll figure out, eventually.

Post title: The Last Picture Show (1971)

West of the Pecos

Two more days spent photographing West Texas - Amarillo south to Odessa, west to Sierra Blanca, then southeast to Alpine. It’s hard to grasp just how big this state is until you begin to explore in the not-so-straight lines that I enjoy and places that seem close together on a map are much farther apart than they appear.

A fun and perhaps surprising fact - Texas is actually taller than it is wide. It measures 801 miles from the top of the panhandle to the Rio Grande River in Big Bend National Park. It is a mere 773 miles from the eastern edge to El Paso.

I just got them four lanes of hard Amarillo highway

I’m on the road to explore West Texas, my first adventure since getting fully vaccinated late last month. Tonight finds me in Amarillo, a mythical place in my mind due to lots of outlaw country songs and Stephen Shore’s postcards.

Heading south tomorrow with little plans for where I’m headed. Sometimes that’s the best sort of day.

Post title: Terry Allen - Amarillo Highway

All Hail West Texas

Now that I’m vaccinated, it’s time to get out and explore a place that has been on my list for quite some time: West Texas. Outside of two trips to the panhandle in the past, I haven’t spent much time in the state, and it remains the largest portion of the North American Great Plains that I have not yet photographed.

When I tell people I’m going to wander West Texas, I inevitably get a strange look and a question that always boils down to “Why would you do that?”

My first - and still (most likely) favorite - Mountain Goats album is a series of stories about lonely and displaced people that inhabit West Texas. I identify strongly with this record, in part due to a memorable time in my life where my friend Doug covered “Jenny” during his live sets at Fizzle Like A Flood, and because I’ve always related to the emptiness yet hopeful nature of John Darnielle’s song writing.

The Last Picture Show, written by Larry McMurtry and directed by Peter Bogdanovich, is one of my all-time favorite films. It is set in a dusty, largely empty West Texas town (filmed in Archer City, just south of Wichita Falls) and depicts the difficulties of life in a small town without much going on other than high school football.

You may notice a trend here. Will West Texas feel as lonely as I imagine?

“And I ain't got no blood veins
I just got them four lanes
Of hard Amarillo Highway.”