Exurbia #7. Horizon City, Texas, 2018
Text and photograph by Bruce Berman
The Exurbia series concentrates on the landscape that is neither suburban nor urban. It is usually found in the lands just beyond the suburbs, places where individuals and small businesses went, years ago, where the land was cheap and undeveloped. Now The Grid is coming to these places, doing what The Grid does: gobble up the land, erase or sandpaper its textures, oust the one-of-a-kind, make things safe and expected, over-electrified and deadingly dull.
Exurbia is the land that is America today, a place where the suburban cookie cutter machine has come and is bringing the American Dream, which for many is the American Bore.
Is there anything else remotely interesting about The Grid, the atypical square that has a Diamond Shamrock on one corner, KFC on the other, Jack In The Box on another and, if you’re lucky, a Walgreen’s to round it out. And so it goes, on and on, block by block, mile by mile, city by city… forever.
The Exurbia series is a section in my newest book, The Funklands (publication Fall 2018, 133 pages, color photographs, Border Blog Press).
Until then, savor the rough edges.
They’re going fast.
