"As I drove down the I-5, the landscapes didn't always match the ones in my head. The roads felt lonelier, more worn down. Diners welcomed me in and called me "sir" from across the room, but I never stayed long enough for anyone to see me up close. I often shot from the car, it's where I felt safest in the small towns I passed through."
"It felt like I was watching a new movie this time, unfolding through the windshield. The scenes were warped and dystopian, and I soon realized the feeling of nostalgia I came for was unattainable. It is one thing to grieve a memory of America you have never experienced, but it is another to have your own identity wrapped up in the unattainable place."
Poppy Steer, a Sydney-born, Vancouver-based trans photographer, creates a series inspired by the American open road and imagined memories of places never visited. Influenced by Wim Wenders, Paris, Texas, and the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, Steer sought the cinematic America while driving from Canada to California in their 30s. The journey revealed landscapes that felt lonelier and more worn than imagined, moments of misgendering in small-town diners, and a preference for shooting from the car as a mode of safety and observation. The trip underscored the unattainability of a nostalgic ideal and the tension between identity and imagined places.
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