photographer Rob Amberg, whose terrific Sodom Laurel Album was about tobacco farmers in the until-recently remote mountains of North Carolina, has a new book about the construction, beginning in 1994, of the

I-26--

The first wave of newcomers to Madison County in the early 1970s were
back-to-the-landers and others seeking refuge from the cities. Since
that time, a steady stream of people has moved to the county. With the
opening of I-26 in 2003, that steady stream has become a roaring river.
Dozens of new developments and gated communities, fast food franchises
where there were none, and hundreds of new residents with little
knowledge of the existing culture have brought significant changes to
the area.


When I began documenting the new road construction in 1994, I had
little idea that the work would develop into the long-term,
multi-disciplinary project that it has become. I expected to visit the
site of the proposed interstate on occasion, shoot some film, and add
it to my growing body of photographs on change in Madison County. But
as the intensity and magnitude of the changes to the physical
environment became more evident, I was constantly drawn to the
construction site -- compelled to photograph the destruction of the
vernacular landscape and to record its impact on the lives of the
residents. I also began to understand the construction of I-26, the
new road, as a metaphor – a symbol of the push toward modernity that
seems to be happening in much of the world.