Highway 61

A personal journey made on one of America's most historic and defining routes--Highway 61--by one of Hollywood's finest, most gifted talents--Jessica Lange.

Highway 61 is a storied stretch of road that cuts through the center of the country, North to South, originating in the Boreal forests on the North Shore of Lake Superior at the Canadian border and ends at Broad and Tulane in downtown New Orleans. It passes through eight states. It is sometimes called the Great River Road, rolling along the Mississippi and when it heads south out of Memphis, through the ancient flood plains of that river it becomes known as the Blues Highway - home to some of the greatest blues singers of the last century, many of whom recorded songs about this highway.

"Lord, it wrecked my heart
to think about Highway 61
I felt so blue, Lord, while
I was out on that lonely highway."
--Roosevelt Sykes

"I was born in a small town in Northern Minnesota on Highway 61, as were my mother and father, my sisters. Most of my family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, were born, raised, married, lived and died and some buried along that stretch of highway. I drove that road countless times growing up and have been driving it again often in the last eight years, back and forth between New Orleans and my Minnesota, sometimes just passing through places - sometimes staying.

Long stretches of Highway 61, north and south, are empty now, desolate. The landscape forlorn, you sense a longing for what has gone missing. The small towns, the stores, neighborhoods, family farms, the factories. Even the strip malls have failed. What remains is mysterious, melancholy, lonely.

These photographs are a chronicle of what remains and what has disappeared. It has a long memory, Highway 61."
--Jessica Lange