Highway Postcards
Christopher L. Siefert
1995

“There is no there, there…”

In the early nineties, 60,000 square miles of United States land had been paved over – the equivalent of 29,040,000 football fields. Some people even began calling the 44,000-mile interstate highway system in the United States the “eighth wonder of the world.”

Christopher Siefert began experimenting with the first version of Photoshop to graphically transform the US interstate system. Contemplating the beauty of a clover leaf’s perfect geometry, he chooses to depict what seems like an ordinary condition. At a second glance, it morphs into an eternal loop, trapping drivers on the highway forever. The flugelhorn ramp has a similar quality of movement and geometric abstraction, from what appears at first glance to be properly placed in its environment. Chris’ manipulation of how people take for granted this massive highway system was playful and unique to his time.