The Yellow Book’s Road

In 1955 the federal government published the “General Location of National System of Interstate Highways,” nicknamed “The Yellow Book” for its bright yellow cover. This book outlines the original plans where interstate highways were to be built in 23 cities across the United States, and it prompted the passing of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. This plan provided for a 65,000 km national system of interstate and defense highways to be built over 13 years. Cities were selected based upon having a population at the time of over 50,000 people. In 2020 I began my project The Yellow Book’s Road with the goal of photographing all 123 cities. To date, I have photographed 81. I am photographing to create a record of the consequences and outcomes of the first urban interstates across the country.

In this ongoing project I am visiting each of these cities to photograph the placements of these highways. In an overwhelming number of these cities the interstates were specifically planned to go through, and ultimately devastate historic black communities. As this book was created in the 1950s, it directly reflects the systemic racism in city planning. I photograph the physicality of the highway overshadowing communities, the small houses that sit almost underneath it, the barriers it creates, the traffic it invites through and around. My photographs function as a massive survey, examining how the same decisions that altered the neighborhood I live in and where I began this work, Old South Baton Rouge, LA, can be seen across the country.

As I have been working on this project, I have witnessed a revealing portrait of the history of American cities. In my discoveries I have photographed issues of segregation, geography, gentrification, homelessness, pandemic era, declining populations, factory closures and exhausted natural resources as an example of what can stem from interstate placement.

I believe this work has critical and timely importance as our government of today revisits and reexamines the infrastructure bill and we as a country reckon with systemic racism. I believe it is of great importance to create a record over 60 years later as to what the interstates did to each city and the people who live in them.

2018-current