Documenting Nostalgia on Route 66

How is it that imagery can make us nostalgic about something that still exists? Filmmaker and photographer Phil Donohue set out to explore the question while traveling with architect Andrew Kovacs from Los Angeles to Chicago. Donohue was documenting the transportation of a model Kovac’s office had made for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, but he was also trying to capture the nostalgia that thrives along the roadside of the famous Route 66, one of the original roads in the U.S. Highway System.

Donohue is well-versed in the highway, having grown up in Phoenix, Arizona, and driven the route a handful of times. He described the experience of re-treading that ground as “painfully nostalgic,” observing how the open land and active ranches of his early childhood had been replaced by big box retailers that came into the area and never left. Donohue said he became obsessed with the evocation of nostalgia, and “wanted to find a way to somehow put people back in a time and place and moment by showing [them] what it looks like now—even though it looks like it’s still of the past.”