With the modern highway rest area becoming a veritable megalopolis that condenses Sprawlville, USA, into one convenient stop offering gas, fast food, restrooms, ATMs, WiFi, and more, do you even notice the old-time just-a-rest stops any more" Photographer Ryann Ford does. She’s been shooting them for the past seven years, and the results are collected in a new coffee-table book, “The Last Stop.”
Rest stops would seem to be a highly obscure subject, which may explain why the many photography books dedicated to roadside America have heretofore ignored them.
Ford began to notice them when she moved from Southern California to Texas, and assignments took her all across the state, where she often traveled the back roads. “So many of the ones I saw in Texas were so photogenic,” she says. When she learned that many were being closed or demolished, she began photographing them in earnest.
She has photographed more than 400 of the vanishing roadside rest stops, simple picnic tables under a shade-giving shelter; they’re the kind of spots where motorists would escape the confines of the car for few minutes, pour themselves a drink from a thermos, and unfold a map?although Ford admits to using Google Earth to find them. She estimates that in her quest she has traveled more than 10,000 miles through 21 states, all via Volkswagen Jetta (first one, then another).
Allen Williams could be considered the father of the roadside rest stop. In the summe...