Michael Ormerod: Roads to Nowhere
The book “American Photographs” and the recent exhibition “Vanishing Point” celebrate previously unseen work by Michael Ormerod. For 20 years, the British photographer traveled on the road throughout the United States, timelessly capturing rural America.
Since the late 1970s, the photographer thraveled through the US in a VW camper van, using William Least Heat-Moon’s autobiographical travel book Blue Highways as an inspiration and photographing a stateless, forgotten America. His life tragically ended in 1991 following a road accident during his last field trip.
Untitled, late 1970s – 1991 from American Photographs © Michael Ormerod
Girl blowing bubble gum, Wall, South Dakota, 1986 © Michael Ormerod
Untitled, late 1970s – 1991 from American Photographs © Michael Ormerod
Untitled, late 1970s – 1991 from American Photographs © Michael Ormerod
While his work stands on its own, he was in the footsteps of authors like Walker Evans and Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Joel Sternfeld. As author and critic Geoff Dyer argues, “Ormerod was seeing not just America -- the beautiful, the ugly -- he was also seeing and on the look-out for the history of American photography.”
Untitled, late 1970s – 1991 from American Photographs © Michael Ormerod
Child with mask, Hillrose, Colorado, 1989 © Michael Ormerod
Untitled, late 1970s – 1991 from American Photographs © Michael Ormerod
The book “American Photographs” is published by RRB Photobooks and available at the price of £60.00. The color photographs were included not in the book, but in Michael Ormerod’s recent exhibition “Vanishing Point”, at Crane Kalman Brighton.
