Route 22

by Benjamin Swett

Route 22 is a 300-mile highway that connects Manhattan and Montreal. One day while driving on it, Benjamin Swett was struck by the contrast between the landscape he could see through his car window and the more romantic one he remembered from his childhood. Without any particular plan, he set out to discover how the upstate New York of James Fenimore Cooper and Thomas Cole became this other place—a seemingly lost, untended region of off-track betting parlors and tattoo emporiums, abandoned diners, and ancient building crumbling into forgotten canals. The result of his exploration is this book, an engaging and deeply personal meditation on a complicated and beautiful landscape, accompanied by 90 evocative photographs.

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