SH 66 by Umbrella Factory Magazine Blog Site

photos and text by Anthony

ILacqua

photos and text by Anthony

ILacqua

SH 66

If nothing more, SH 66, is a record of a very short road trip. From Platteville to Lyons, Colorado, the entire length of the highway is less than 23 miles, not even a proper road trip in the American ideal. The very number 66 invokes nostalgic notions of travel. Although the Mother Road Route 66, now decommissioned, does not go through Colorado, we do have a State Highway with the same number. Despite there being nothing even remotely romantic with this particular highway, it has held my imagination for years. Not surprising, SH 66 touches the outskirts of my town of Longmont, Colorado and for years I lived right on it at Hover Street in the very northwest corner of town. Trained as a writer, I came to photography later in life. I had loved taking photos when I was younger, and got back into it shortly after my first novel, Dysphoric Notions, was published in 2012. By 2012, film was already a dwindling medium. After my cousin (a wonderful photographer herself) gave me an old Pentax K1000 and a Holga 120N, I was either destined, or doomed to work with film. My process with photography is not much different than my process with writing. For starters, they are both very solitary activities, both excite me and appeal to my introverted nature. I also find that I prefer still life and

architectural photography which doesn’t seem all that different from the detached and empty landscapes in my fiction. Despite the idea of loneliness and desolation in my work, it is more a function of my imagination and not a manifestation of psychological make up. If my subject matter seems empty or quiet, what I really aim for is a certain aesthetic. I like hazy, grainy, distorted and over saturated images. I like photos like this and I like to take photos like this because I like to see photos as a representation of life rather than reproducing it. I took all the photos for SH 66 over a period of a few days in August 2020. What I found in the three towns I travel through was empty spaces and abandon and decay and quiet. First, I do not know what the greater annals of time will remember of the great Covid 19 but I will remember the lack of activity and people in the streets and towns making a dreamlike ghost world. Likewise, 2020 being what it was, I hope we all remember it as a very uncertain time. A few things to record: George Floyd, mass civil unrest and a polarized population. I felt the polarization of the current state of affairs on either end of the 23 miles I traveled. With any creative endeavor, I feel like there must be something gained, something learned or some sort of catharsis. I mean, why make art at all if there isn’t some greater understanding or perspective on the other side? For me, I learned something about myself and what I learned didn’t make me feel very good. In fact, what I learned is that I am, and I have always been, a very intolerant person. I have lacked understanding and patience.

In Platteville, I was a little scared for my life. I felt like I could have been shot at any point. As I walked through the streets and looked at all the houses in disrepair and “Trump-Pence” signs, I was waiting for some unspeakable violence to come to me. I am not suggesting that all TrumpPence people are violent, but it is the feeling I get when I’m around it. Also, the whole “Make America Great Again,” is just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. If you want to make America great again, start with a town like Platteville, all the towns like Platteville. When we can clean up the streets, vacant lots, add a coat of paint and take a little pride in our communities, and in each other, only then will we be on the road to make America great again. Conversely, in Lyons, I didn’t feel any safer. Sure, there wasn’t a single Trump-Pence sign. Rather than the large pick-up truck, the streets were covered in electric cars. Rather than rednecks, it was hippies. What really worried me, of course, was that someone was going to see me and call the police: there’s a stranger in my neighborhood and he has a camera. I’ve had very little exposure to the police, and I aim to keep it that way. Some people have a problem with authority figures, but not me. I guess I’ve always viewed the police as low level bureaucrats. The real trouble with the police is that they seem to ask the same questions over and over and over again, and I get very tired of repeating myself: “I’m just a dolt with a camera, I’m just taking pictures, no, I’m not a terrorist, I’m an artist.” This project, SH 66, proved to me a very reflective project. After all, I got to walk around a couple towns and hide behind a camera. Looking through the view finder, I saw

much more than what was in the frame. All images were taken with a Pentax K1000 35MM SLR camera in August of 2020 with Fuji and Kodak C-41 film. After the film was developed, it was rendered digitally. The grainy nature of many of the exposures is inherent with the nature of film speed and the times of day the shutter was opened. Photoshop was used to emulate a cross processed effect as if I had the C-41 film processed with E-6 slide chemicals. I chose to change the size of the images to a 4:5 ratio which is reminiscent of the Kodak 110 film which launched in 1972. 110 film was nothing more than the shortening of the 126 film cartridge and produced 13MM by 17MM negatives. 110 film was available in color print, black and white and slide options, the perfect thing for cross processing. One final note, I took all of these images (and a great many more) during the horrible fires of 2020 which further washed out the contrasts of my subjects. Layout was done in Adobe InDesign. Fonts: Densmore by Raymond Larabie and Cormorant by Christian Thalmann.

SH 66 | Platteville

SH 66 | Longmont

SH 66 | Lyons

State Highway 66 (SH 66) is a 22.7 mi (36.5 km) long east-west state highway in Boulder and Weld counties in Colorado. The highway extends from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at a junction with U.S. Route 36 (US 36) and SH 7 southeast of Lyons, proceeding east through the northern edge of Longmont, to Platteville where it ends at US 85. Although a number of western states retain their “state highway 66” as the decommissioned US 66, the “Mother Road” did not run through Colorado, and SH 66 has no connection to the famed Historic Route 66.