CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/17/2017

'David Freund: Gas Stop' - 4 Volume Ltd Ed from Steidl

Over four volumes and more than 630 pages, David Freund's Gas Stop presents 574 black-and-white photographs of American gas stations, 1978-81. Though they were made only four decades ago, the photographs capture another time entirely. "In the 1940s my father ran a Sinclair station in Ottumwa, Iowa, the sort of station I could still come across when photographing for Gas Stop," Freund writes. "To this boy it was a friendly, manly place dense with car parts and the alluring smell of petroleum products... Besides a welcome, stations like my Dad's might offer directions, maps, car maintenance, tires, even newspapers and magazines. And bathrooms. Now its kind have been supplanted almost entirely by self-service stations with credit-card-activated pumps where one can purchase gas without encountering another human." Featured photograph is from Florida, 1981.