The magazine of the photo-essay
September back 2019 issue
“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!”
Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film maker
by Edward Keating
Main Street. The Lost Dream of Route 66 includes photographs taken by
Edward Keating along Route 66 from 2000 to 2011.
Once the only direct road to California, an interstate highway system built in the
1950s bypassed ‘the Mother Road’ and shut off its lifeblood, forcing thousands of
shops and motels into bankruptcy over the next fifty years. Between the twin
pressures of harmful trade treaties and lower wages abroad, the national economy
had changed as well, as entire industries began to dry up, sending a countless
number of jobs to Asia and south of the border. Western-bound job seekers now
bumped shoulders with Mexican immigrants heading east looking for the same. As a
boy, Keating heard his mother tell stories of growing up in St. Louis near Route 66,
tales of her trips to California; and of her father, the first Ford dealer in the bustling city, selling Model A’s in the teens
and twenties. Therefore, it was probably fate that lead Keating to the brink on the road that no longer held the nation’s
promise. Some made it across while others got stuck to the side of the road. Keating made it across.
This book is about the many who didn’t and settled wherever their bones and their broken cars dropped them.
Chigago, Illinois, 2003
Springfield, Illinois, 2003
Girard, Illinois, 2003
Carlinville, 2003
Illinois, 2003
East St. Louis, Illinois, 2003.
St. Louis, Missouri, 2000
St. Louis, Missouri, 2000
Missouri, 2003
Missouri, 2003
Missouri, 2003
Lebanon, Missouri, 2007
Joplin, Missouri, 2000
