Atlantic Coast

In a new body of work, a critically acclaimed photographer retraces Berenice Abbott’s 1954 photographic journey along the Eastern Seaboard, documenting dislocation, loss, and a shifting American dream.

In 1954, American photographer Berenice Abbott set out to document the historic US Route 1, already predicting seismic changes to small towns and major cities along the route brought by the rapidly expanding Interstate Highway System. Spanning all thirteen original colonies and beyond—from Fort Kent, Maine, to Key West, Florida—US Route 1 formed over the course of three hundred years from connecting sections of what was once known as the Atlantic Highway. Inspired by Abbott’s acute and poetic observations on life along Route 1 and on the seventieth anniversary of her project, Florida-based photographer Anastasia Samoylova ventures on her own journey to revisit those communities forever transformed by the interstate. Working in color and black and white, Samoylova provides a closer look at the American landscape irreversibly altered by the unrelenting expansion of industry, commerce, and development, as well as the displacement and tenacity of people and wildlife. Copublished by Aperture and the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida.

Anastasia Samoylova (born in Moscow, 1984) is a Miami-based photographer who explores the intersections of environmentalism, consumerism, politics, and the picturesque.