Ailor Photography
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About Our Photo Book Blue Highways Revisited
My father's and my book, Blue Highways Revisited, will be released in the spring of 2012 by the University of Missouri Press on the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Blue Highways.
In 1978 William Least Heat-Moon left Columbia, MO, and traveled 13,899 miles on the back-roads of America – through Nameless, Tennessee; Tomahawk, North Carolina; Dime Box, Texas; Frenchman, Nevada; Beaver, Oregon; Ivanhoe, Michigan; Melvin Village, New Hampshire; Orient, New York; French Lick, Indiana – hundreds of “the-don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it-towns” of America.
From his travels he wrote the New York Times Best Seller, Blue Highways, which captured in words the mom-and-pop cafes, the five-thirty taverns, and the magnificent and diverse scenery of thirty-eight states. He also included twenty-three photographs and the heart-warming and eloquent stories of the wise and colorful characters he met along the way.
The name Blue Highways has become synonymous with back-roads America and the yearning we have all experienced to “hit the road” or make that “road-trip.” Over four million copies have sold and it is still in print.
From October 1, 2006, to August 6, 2008, Edgar I Ailor III and Edgar I Ailor IV photographed Heat-Moon’s memorable route. With Heat-Moon’s eloquent, graphic, and exacting descriptions of landscapes and terrain, driving along the same highways often resulted in déjà vu. Time after time a scene from the book came into focus as we rounded a bend or popped over a hill. We stepped off the pages of the book to recapture a memory recorded almost three decades prior.
Our project, Blue Highways Revisited, was accepted as one of a hundred worldwide photography portfolios for the 2011 Santa Fe Review, a prestigious juried review with participants from 13 countries and 23 states. In the spring of 2012 get a copy of Blue Highways Revisited at your local book store -- then travel with us to “a place where a man can lose himself” – find himself as well.
