Originally written for Printed Matter. ◊◊
Points of Departure: Roadside Memorial Polaroids is a collection of 139 color reproductions of Polaroid photographs by Phillip March Jones, taken of graves on various anonymous roadsides across the United States. The book offers the geography of the project as a means of navigation, beginning with a map documenting where the Polaroids were taken, and ending with an index of each site’s coordinates. And yet it is between these geographic markers that the project’s quiet struggle to observe and remember is felt strongest. The expanse of uncaptioned images recalls a running rhythm not unlike the experience of grasping at the landscape while driving on a highway.