I'm happy to have a few of my Stranded images among such good company in No Direction Home, an exhibition for the curated by good friend Stacy Mehrfar for the Head On Photo Festival. The show focuses on contemporary interpretations of the tradition of American road photography.

The details:

No Direction Home
Curated by Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
Featuring work by Alec Soth, Amy Stein, Brian Ulrich, Doug Rickard, Justin James Reed, Naomi Harris and Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
May 24th - June 4th
Depot II Gallery
2 Danks Street
Waterloo NSW, Australia

Opening Reception: May 24, 6-8pm

I am equally mesmerized and repulsed by art fairs in general and the annual Miami art fair fete in particular. I love the opportunity to see so much work in one place, but often it is presented without context and the whole air of commerce can be overwhelming. It's a love, love, hate, love kind of thing for me.

Sadly, this year I will not be heading south for the fun and sun, but my work has made the trip. Pool Gallery has made the long journey from Berlin to Miami and will be featuring a number of photographs from my Stranded series in their booth at NADA. They will also have signed copies of my Domesticated book for sale.

A few years ago Mark McPherson contacted me out of the blue asking if I was interested in taking part in a book project that focused on Australian and American photographers. I thought, hmm... that's random, but potentially interesting. I knew very little about Australia beyond the cliches of surfing, kangaroos and walkabouts. Since Hijacked was released I have been involved in an intense love affair with the country.

Thank you, Mark, for opening so many doors.

After three weeks touring about New South Wales, I'm now in Perth for a series of Foto Freo related events. Thursday, Stranded will have it's solo debut at the Perth Centre for Photography. The show will include 33 images and I'm nervous and excited to see how they work together. Foto Freo also includes talks and shows by Trente Park, Chien-Chi Chang, Jon Levy and friends and fellow Americans Carrie Levy, Stacy Mehfar and Andy Adams.

Thanks to Bob Hewitt, June Moorhouse, Laura Beilby and the folks at the Perth Centre for Photography for inviting me to Australia and Foto Freo.

This blog has been quiet lately because I've been focusing on making images rather than writing about them.

Right now, I'm in Australia to participate in Foto Freo. The festival--which will feature the first solo show of Stranded and a panel discussion where I'll be speaking about online photo communities and blogging with the illustrious Andy Adams and Jon Levy--doesn't start until March 20, but I decided to turn my once-in-a-lifetime trip to Australia into a jam packed, three week affair.

Over the past ten days or so I've been working on a new collaborative project with photographer Stacy Mehrfar that has taken us from Sydney to the dusty wilds of the outback. After ten straight days of shooting from sunup to sundown I'm very happy to be back in Sydney.

If you happen to be in Sydney, please come celebrate with me tonight at the Australian Centre for Photography where a solo exhibition of Domesticated is opening. My focus will be squarely on the Sydney art scene and drinking a ridiculous amount of Coopers.

Here are the details:

Amy Stein | Domesticated
Friday March 12 - Sunday April 11, 2010
Australian Centre for Photography
257 Oxford St
Paddington NSW 2021

Opening Reception: Thursday, March 11, 6-8pm
Artists Talk: Saturday, March 13, 1pm

Please join me next Friday for a special event. I will be talking with renowned art critic Lyle Rexer about my series Stranded and the themes that connect it with Kelly Reichardt’s award winning film Wendy and Lucy.

When I saw Wendy and Lucy in 2008 at the Film Forum I was struck by the similarities between Stranded and this beautifully simple film about a woman and her dog stuck in an Oregon town after her car breaks down.

It’s unusual to screen a film as part of a show of still images, but Brian Ulrich and I, along with the folks from Caption Gallery, decided to broaden the conversation beyond the images in the Instruments of Empire exhibit. In March Brian will be at the gallery to screen Jem Cohen's The Chain. More on this in a few weeks.


Here are the details:

In Conversation: Lyle Rexer and Amy Stein
Friday, February 19
Caption Gallery
55 Washington Street, No. 802
Brooklyn, NY

Conversation: Lyle Rexer and Amy Stein
7:30pm - 8:15pm

Screening: Wendy and Lucy
8:15pm - 9:30pm

"In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments."


Thursday night is the opening of my two-person show with Brian Ulrich, Instruments of Empire, at Caption Gallery in Brooklyn. The exhibition will feature new work from my Stranded series and Brian’s Dark Stores series, plus work we created specifically for the show where we reference each other’s projects.

On the surface our two series couldn’t be more different; one, portraits of stranded motorists and the other environmental landscapes of abandoned box stores. Look deeper and you’ll see two artists engaged in long-term projects examining the real and metaphorical effects of a country strained by the collapse and corruption of our social institutions. This timely and telling exhibition of photographs debuts as the economic crisis continues and Americans are forced to reexamine their long held assumptions of entitlement, privilege and permanence.

Here are the details:

Instruments of Empire: Photographs by Amy Stein and Brian Ulrich
January 28 – March 25
Caption Gallery
55 Washington Street, No. 802
Brooklyn, NY

Opening Reception: January 28, 6:30pm – 8:00pm

In addition to the photographs, Brian and I are planning some additional programming surprises during the run of this exhibition. Stay tuned and see you at the opening.

The 2009 Light Work Annual is out now and features five images from my Stranded series with an essay by Alec Soth. I'm very grateful to Light Work for inviting me to be an Artist-in-Residence and to Alec for his thoughtful words about my work.

I'm in Denmark this week for the Friday opening of my Domesticated show in Aarhus at Galleri Image.

I'm also showing Stranded in an amazing group show, Auto. Sueño y Materia, with Edward Burtynsky, Vik Muniz, Andrew Bush, Thomas Struth and Martin Parr opening Friday at LABoral Centro de Arte in Gijón, Spain.

If you are looking for something a little closer to home this Friday, I suggest you go to my homegirl Justine Reyes' solo exhibition, Home, Away from Home, at Eastern District in Brooklyn. I'm told Justine's show will extend beyond the gallery to an ice cream truck outside. Yum.

I have been sitting on a bunch of new Domesticated and Stranded images for a while, but just got around to posting them on my site.

I have been on the road for the better part of a week finishing my Stranded project. I will post about my trip in a day or so when I get my bearings and wrap my head around the experience. In the meantime, here some housekeeping updates on things that happened while I was away.

Domesticated was named to the photo-eye Best of 2008 books lists of Chris Pichler of Nazraeli Press and Heather Prichard of photo-eye, Nymphoto and Two Way Lens posted interviews with me, and Domesticated got a nice write-up by Eliza Honey on the The New Yorker's Book Bench.

Friday morning I am flying to New Orleans to begin the final leg of my Stranded project. The series began in NOLA over three years ago as a response to Katrina and the flooding of the city. Since that time I have logged thousands of miles on the road as our country has suffered through a series of corruptions and failures of our traditional institutions of support. As the country has endured a collapse of certainty, Stranded has taken on a much greater significance for me.

Like my previous Stranded trips I have mapped out a probable route. And, like my previous Stranded trips that route is subject to change depending on my success or failure at finding stranded motorists. Friday, I will be landing in New Orleans and then taking two days to soak up the city and Prospect.1. After that I am heading east on I-10 across the Panhandle to Jacksonville. Then I head north on I-95 to Savannah and northwest on I-16 to Macon and I-75 to Atlanta. From Atlanta, it's southwest on I-85 to Montgomery, AL, I-65 to Mobile, AL and then I-10 back to the Big Easy.

If you know of any 'can't miss' roadside attractions, down home eateries or cultural happenings on my route, please let me know.

Yesterday was brutal. We drove from St Louis to Chicago (298 miles) and found only one situation to shoot. Definitely not the best way to end a 1,500 mile search for stranded motorists. Normally I would be completely frustrated, but this project is all about the collapse of certainty in America during the second term of the Bush administration, so coming up short seems symbolically appropriate.

When I do these trips I often speed from city to city, rarely stopping to visit the bounty of attractions America has to offer. For the final leg of this trip we slowed it down a bit and took in some of the sights.

First stop was a pilgrimage to Miles Davis' boyhood home in East St Louis. East St Louis looks exactly like New Orleans did after Katrina, only the devastation in this city was caused by the gradual decay of America's industrial economy. More than ninety percent of downtown East St Louis appears to be boarded up or falling down and there didn't appear to be but a few liquor stores providing the basics for people. No place to buy milk or gas or diapers or work. It's really tragic that the richest country in the world allows this kind of poverty smack dab in its heart.

A short ride from East St. Louis we stopped to see the Cahokia Mounds. Cahokia is the ruins of a massive ancient city inhabited by Native Americans between 650-1400 CE. There are over a hundred mounds that still remain on the site including Monk's Mound, the largest man-made earthen mound in North America.

Much further down the road in Springfield, IL we visited the tomb of Abraham Lincoln. The tomb was closed, but we had a good time watching as an endless parade of minivans pulled up and unloaded pods of dirty faced sausage children to pay their respects to the Great Emancipator.

When we got to Chicago we realized too late the city was running the marathon and hosting an outdoor country music festival on the same day. Several tense hours in traffic later we made it the Gitelson's for a delicious dinner and proper introductions to the new Git on the block, Archie.

After dinner we drove to Milwaukee (92 miles) and caught a few hours of sleep before our early morning flight back to New York.

We started the day in Kansas City and after a brief encounter with a weirdo at a Radio Shack in Kansas we hit up Brian Ulrich's show at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas. What an impressive space and what an impressive showing for Brian. He had twenty-one beautifully massive prints covering several rooms of the museum.

After the show we started out on the long journey east on I-70 towards St Louis. I-70 between Kansas City and St Louis (249 miles) is straight and long and has a billboard every ten feet. You can tell a lot about a state by reading all the signs that line the highway. It would seem the good people of Missouri love John McCain, hate baby-killers, and have a voracious appetite for porn. There were more adult superstores than there were Dairy Queens. Along the way we stopped in Boonville, MO for lunch (hello, Tim!).

Today was a great day for stranded motorists. I shot five encounters which definitely made up for the first two days. Just outside of St Louis I was lucky to photograph Orlando who was broken down on the west bound shoulder of I-70. Orlando had the most impressive gold grill I've ever seen and was a real sweetheart.

Once the sun started to set we headed over to the Arch. I have been to St Louis before but never really paid attention the city's most famous landmark. It really is a beautiful piece of art. When we were in Minneapolis we saw the Eero Saarinen exhibit as the Walker Arts Center and seeing the Saarinen-designed arch in person was the perfect compliment to our journey.

Tomorrow we are off to Chicago (298 miles) where we are hoping to see the Gitelson clan...

We've spent the past three days on the road working on my Stranded project. On Wednesday we flew into Milwaukee, rented a car, and where off on big loop of the Midwest. From Milwaukee we drove straight to Minneapolis then to Des Moines and then to Kansas City.

Up until today the trip has been a bit of stranded motorist bust. From Milwaukee to Minneapolis (336 miles) we only encountered a single situation to shoot, but as I approached the car I realized the couple were smoking a joint and were not too interested in having their picture taken.

From Minneapolis to Des Moines (244 miles) we found one stranded motorist on I-35 just outside of Dow, Iowa. Her name was Milta and she was a Christian missionary on her way to visit her daughter in Des Moines when her car broke down.

Des Moines to Kansas City (194 miles) proved fruitless. We saw a number of people broken down in the opposite direction, but by the time we found an offramp and raced back, they were long gone. I've never traveled this far and found so few motorists to shoot. Luckily, when we got to Kansas City I hit the jackpot and shot four situations today.

Kansas City is a pretty happening town. We visited the American Jazz Museum and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in the 18th and Vine historic district and then we took in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The Nelson-Atkins has an impressive permanent collection with a great selection of photography. Definitely a must see if you are ever in Kansas City.

We couldn't come to Kansas City without eating some barbeque. So, after the museum we headed to a B.B.'s Lawnside BBQ for a rib dinner and live blues. The ribs were the best I've ever tasted and the band, Trampled Under Foot, was h-o-t. This place felt like the real deal.

Tomorrow we are off to St Louis (249 miles)...

Amani Olu just let me know that one of my prints is up for sale on eBay. This is the first time my work has hit the secondary market and while it's only eBay, it's still a minor landmark in my career.

The print, Peri, Route 64, Kentucky from my Stranded series, was originally available for sale as part of Humble Arts Foundation's Limited Edition Print sale. The original price of the print was $375 and the eBay price is, well, look for yourself. Also notice the seller says Peri has never been "framed or displayed" which basically means the person never enjoyed it. Too funny.

I don't see this as an endorsement of my work so much as a strong endorsement of the quality of work and the amazing deals available through Humble's Limited Edition program. Unless you like living with regret you should head over to the Humble site now and pick up a print or three.

MarkingRoom is an online magazine that looks at the process of making images. The magazine is run by the wonderful Davin Risk who also writes the MakingRoom blog. Davin just posted an interview with me about my ongoing Stranded series.

Finally some installation shots from my shows currently up at Paul Kopeikin Gallery and SMoCA.

Domesticated at Paul Kopeikin







Stranded at SMoCA





(If you could turn around you would see a wall of Robert Franks.)

Chorizo Pig!


I spotted Chorizo Pig in a supermarket in Phoenix. I had a wonderful time in Arizona. Big thanks to Claire Carter, Michael Lundgren, Pat Evans and all the folks at SMoCA.

I just added some new Domesticated and Stranded images to my Web site. Take a look and let me know what you think.

If you are in SoCal and want to see the Domesticated images in person, please come to my big solo show opening this Saturday at Paul Kopeikin Gallery.

Work from my Stranded series is currently featured in the exhibit Car Culture at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. The big opening for the show is this Friday from 6 - 8 PM. If you are in Scottsdale or the greater Phoenix area, try to stop by and check out the exhibition.

Also, the folks at SMoCA have put together a snazzy site to compliment the show. It's the next best thing to being there.