This series documents an approx. 20 mile stretch of the formerly named “Jefferson Davis Highway,” from Richmond to Chester, VA. While most have forgotten its relationship to the legacy of the Lost Cause, it is visible reminder of the tensions and fractures in American culture. Richmond city renamed its stretch “Emancipation Highway” in 2020, after the violence of the White Nationalist “Unite the Right” March in Charlottesville in 2017.

This photographic survey focuses on the highway from an architectural perspective. Juxtaposing impressions from its dark past and commercial facades of former mid-century franchises (now reborn as new businesses) with the economic challenges of the present, revealing a collision of realities that reflect the complexity of how this space exists today.