CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/6/2017

Henry Wessel: Traffic/Sunset Park/Continental Divide

Featured photograph, from Steidl's gorgeously produced new release—one of the first from our Spring 2017 list—is from Henry Wessel's early '80s Traffic series, in which Wessel photographed Northern California commuters stuck in San Francisco rush hour traffic. ARTFORUM's Sarah Moroz writes, "The people behind the wheel, rolling along in Mustangs, Chevrolets and Bertones, are both vague prototypes and unknowable: a woman in a head scarf, a man in a bow tie. There is something intimate and voyeuristic about fixedly watching these partially visible figures—who are mostly unaware of our gaze—even though they’re circulating in public space. The images have been sequenced so that the cars all face the same direction, simulating traffic’s continuity. Beyond the vehicles, background snippets—a Wells Fargo bank, an advertisement for Yakima sweet corn at Thriftway, a Church’s Chicken sign—are all tokens of Americana: a landscape of commerce and appetite through which the automobile glides."