CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/5/2014

The Open Road: Bernard Plossu

"New Mexico" (1980), by Bernard Plossu, is reproduced from The Open Road, Aperture's critically acclaimed collection of photographs of the American roadtrip. David Campany writes, "In 1965, aged twenty, he visited Mexico and met numerous people, one of whom took him to California (Carmel and Big Sur). From then on, for two decades, he never stopped driving the country's roads. His great loves were beatnik America, nature, the California Sierras, and the poetry of Garry Snyder. He met all kinds of people from all walks of life, and the whole experience was accompanied by music on the radio. Sometimes he was in a Volkswagen van, or in an old convertible gold Oldsmobile Cutlass, bought from a Texan lady for seven hundred dollars… It was a freewheeling life, all of it new and constantly exciting. He stayed with friends (including photographers Lewis Baltz and Steve Kahn) and in hotels: 'I'm in love with hotels—in art, photography, in literature, and in films. They're places where you can leave everything behind. Changing from one room to another is like changing film in a camera. They're like islands, you take a little with you, and you change your sense of rhythm. For me, they are the symbol for travel.'