Photographs by Bryan Schutmaat

Drive far enough into Texas from the Louisiana border, and you’ll see the ground dry, the earth crumble into dust. Eventually, the photographer Bryan Schutmaat told me, the strip malls fade into the rearview mirror, the landscape opens, and the American West begins.

Schutmaat has long been fascinated by the West; as he toured with punk bands in his teens and early 20s, he felt himself drawn to the region and its open space. His new book, Sons of the Living, documents a decade’s worth of more recent journeys through the West and features the hitchhikers and “road dogs” he met along the way.

First in a Subaru Forester and then in a Toyota Tacoma pickup, Schutmaat would set out from his home in Austin and drive toward California. He’d weave from Interstate 10 onto the more isolated two-lane blacktop highways snaking into the remote reaches of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. When he sensed he was encroaching on the sprawl of Los Angeles, he’d turn around. All told, he spent more than 150 days on the road; many nights, he slept in his car.

At truck stops and campgrounds, Schutmaat would shoot portraits of people he encountered and offer to ferry them from one place to the next. Behind the wheel or over a shared meal or beer, he’d listen as they told their stories: One man, Tazz, had taken to the road after he’d been released from prison and struggled to find work. He had drifted far from his childhood in Maine, and his thick Down East accent clashed with his surroundings. He claimed to have once played childhood pranks on Stephen King’s home; later, he told Schutmaat, he committed more serious transgressions. Schutmaat spent several hours talking in a New Mexico Denny’s with another man, Walker, a tall traveler with resplendent facial hair; Schutmaat took his portrait in the light of a gas-station pavilion, Walker’s beard swaying in the breeze.

[From the September 1896 issue: Frederick J. Turner on the problem of the west]

Schutmaat’s work challenges a mythology of the West that has long maintained a hold on the American imagination. Frederick Jackson Turner theorized that the country’s democratic culture was forged from its pacification of the western frontier; the novelist Wallace Stegner called the region “a geography of hope.” But like the Depression-era photographers Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, Schutmaat complicates rosy views of the region and its promise. The newspaper editor Horace Greeley is said to have encouraged one of his charges to “Go west, young man, go west and grow up with the country.” Sons of the Living makes clear that the West contains no guaranteed redemption.

Instead, Schutmaat’s photographs reveal what happens when a country grows old and fractured, its citizens isolated. The travelers Schutmaat photographed—widowers and addicts, migrant workers and survivalists, drifters and divorcées—are resilient, but not exactly hopeful. In Schutmaat’s images of abandoned billboards and collapsing towns, there’s a feeling not of humanity taming the wilderness, but of the wilderness steadily reasserting itself over a crumbling human presence.

When Schutmaat was traveling, he’d pull over on the side of the road at nightfall and hike up the highway embankment. He’d set up his camera somewhere elevated and leave the shutter open for five, even 10 minutes. Through his lens, the sparse sets of headlights on the road below would melt into a river of light: the road erased, a wildness restored.

These photos appear in Bryan Schutmaat’s new book, Sons of the Living.

The CEO of Airbus got a little chippy talking about orbital rival SpaceX. The first Boeing layoff notices have officially begun trickling out. Spirit Airlines has officially been delisted by the New York Stock Exchange post-bankruptcy declaration. Plus: The most popular airline routes in America.

Read more...

Spirit Airlines (SAVEQ) is enduring another inevitable embarrassment of its recent bankruptcy declaration: Its stock has been delisted by the New York Stock Exchange. Shares, which are practically at zero, will now trade in the “pink sheet” market outside of the major venues.

Read more...

As the bankruptcy of Spirit Airlines winds its way through the courts, the rest of the industry is likely trying to figure out how the development will affect their own operations. Deutsche Bank (DB) says that two Spirit-familiar names, JetBlue Airways (JBLU) and Frontier Airlines (ULCC), could stand to benefit more…

Read more...

One of the smaller U.S. airlines just announced a major expansion.

Read more...

Spirit Airlines (SAVE) is throwing in the towel after a series of failed merger attempts left it scrambling to sort out its balance sheet.

Read more...

It turns out that Boeing’s huge layoff plans were not just a strike threat. Spirit Airlines can’t put out an earnings report that might show investors how close it is to bankruptcy. Rich people take private flights like the rest of us take taxis. Plus: The most chronically delayed airline routes in America.

Read more...

As reports suggest bankruptcy is on the horizon for Spirit Airlines (SAVE), the company isn’t saying much. In fact, the one thing Spirit Airlines is saying is that it can’t say what’s going on; the company told investors it won’t be able to put together a quarterly earnings filing.

Read more...

Spirit Airlines (SAVE) stock was sinking sharply to barely above $1 per share early Wednesday, after a report late Tuesday indicated that the ultra-low-cost carrier is preparing to file for bankruptcy.

Read more...

Last week, fuselage manufacturer Spirit AeroSystems (SPR) sounded the alarm that it might not be able to stay in business much longer. On Tuesday, it announced that former and future owner Boeing (BA) would be coming through with a $350 million bailout.

Read more...