Highway 40, 1958

'In darkening day, rain coming on the road, lights already on at 3 PM, mist descending on Highway 40, we see the insect swoop of modern sulphur lamps, the distant haze of forgotten trees...' is how Jack Kerouac depicted the scene of this photograph. In 1958, Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac took a road trip together to Florida. They got support from Life magazine for their expenses but the resultant story was never issued. A dozen years later, Evergreen Review published a handful of photographs from that trip and a text by Kerouac in which he portrays Frank at work: 'I was amazed to see how a photographic artist does the bit, of catching those things about the American Road writers write about. It's pretty amazing to see a guy, while steering at the wheel, suddenly raise his little 300-dollar German camera with one hand and snap something that's on the move in front of him, and through an unwashed windshield at that. Later on, when developed, the unwashed streaks don't harm the light, composition or detail of the picture at all, seem to enhance it.' Kerouac, 'On the Road to Florida,' Evergreen Review, no. 74, January 1970, p. 43