Abstract
Trail, dirtroad, turnpike or freeway — the road has been the primary means of subduing the American land. The representation of this conquest is a constant theme in literature and photography, from the dime novels of the Oregon Trail to Jayne Anne Phillips, from the photographers of the exploratory expeditions of the 1870s to Lee Friedlander and Lewis Baltz. This paper surveys the extraordinary diversity of photographers' approaches, tracing the evolution through successive phases of wonder, distress, nostalgia, disenchantment and symbolic displacement. Throughout the permutations and combinations to which this evolution gives rise, the road emerges as a central topos of the American imagination.
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