On the Street, On the Road

Two of the exhibitions at the Arles festival 2025 look back at four photographers capturing American life and landscapes over the past century.

The World of Louis Stettner (1922–2016)

Louis Stettner was a skilled practitioner of street photography with a political bent, often photographing protests, workers and countercultural movements like the Beat Generation. He said that his outlook was fostered by his experiences in the WWII. He joined up at age 19 in when the U.S.A. entered the war and became a combat photographer. A seminal experience was being sent to Hiroshima.

“If my photographs have always been embedded in daily life, with the emphasis on what is called the ‘common man’, it is because my early formative years were deeply politicized by world events. I grew up with the rise of totalitarianism and what was part of a hurried transformation of the average citizen into a soldier…”

Stettner spent long periods of his life living alternately in New York and France. In New York in the 1950s that he produced two of his most memorable series, Penn Station and Nancy, the Beat Generation.

In the 1970s, he was politically active in his life and in his photography, documenting working people and their struggles for better conditions, the feminist movement and struggles against racism and poverty.

In this video about the exhibition you can hear Stettner's wife, Janet, and the curator of the exhibitions Virginie Cardin discuss his work.

Berenice Abbott, Anna Fox, and Karen Knorr: U.S. Route 1

Route 66 is often called the “mother road” but Route 1 was the first numbered interstate in the automobile era of the 1920s, built north-south down the east coast from Maine to the Florida Keys. It was based on roads that had been used since colonial times, linking the 13 original states.

In 1954, photographer Berenice Abbott made a road trip on Route 1. Abbott had been part of the Greenwich Village art scene since the 1920s, and had specialised in documenting urban transformations in New York. On this trip, she set out to capture, “a realistic picture of a true cross-section of American life.” She intended the photos to make a book, but it was never published.

Six decades later, two more photographers, Anna Fox and Karen Knorr, followed in Abbott’s footsteps. From 2016, at the beginning of Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, till 2019, they followed Route 1 documenting what, if anything had changed.

At the top of the page, you can see Monument, Balsam Valley, Maine, 2023.

Arles Les rencontres de la photographie
All exhibitions: 7 July-5 October 2025

Don't miss our articles on more exhibitions at Arles: On Country: Photgraphing Australia and Disobedient Images.