Still Lifes, U.S.A.

Upon his arrival in the US some 36 years ago, Rudy VanderLans embarked on a pan-American bus trip from New York to California. Overwhelmed by the experience, he rarely took out his camera, feeling unprepared for the challenge to do justice to the visual overload of the American environment. In 2016 he set out to retrace his route, this time with camera in hand and a determination to record the experience. If the work seems familiar at times, VanderLans is quick to name his influences: “It’s through the photographs of Ruscha, Shore, Friedlander, Eggleston, and others that I learned to look at America more discerningly,” he says. “I use their examples as a jumping off point to distill my own impressions.” The haunting work that resulted from his journey, published exclusively in book form, creates the second entry in a trilogy of books that began with Still Lifes, California. These postcards from the road evoke both tranquility and solitude, entropy and loneliness in equal measures.