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Rating: 
Summary: Poignant and sublime photography
Review: Brouws is one of my favorite contemporary photograper and this book proves why. HIGHWAY admirably displays his subtle use of color, elegant compositional eye, and an underlying elegiac tone which he captures, often depicting an American Dream gone awry. Many of the photos seem infused with a Hopper-esque quality; many Springsteen tunes come to mind as well. The inclusion of FSA photographs from the 1930s, and the well-wriiten essays by Polster and Patton, make for a compelling product. This book is a classic and highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Poignant and sublime photography
Review: Brouws is one of my favorite contemporary photography and this book proves why. HIGHWAY admirably displays his subtle use of color, elegant compositional eye, and an underlying elegiac tone which he captures, often depicting an American Dream gone awry. Many of the photos seem infused with a Hopper-esque quality; many Springsteen tunes come to mind as well. The inclusion of FSA photographs from the 1930s, and the well-wriiten essays by Polster and Patton, make for a compelling product. This book is a classic and highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: a mundane revelation...best on the lot
Review: Brouws seems to have acquired a photographer's eye that can look behind and around and through the grime and the dust of the highway's edge, and find an unheralded harmony in the play of concrete, neon, and metal. Looking at the photographs one can recognise what was always there, but always overlooked. These are the backdrops to our highway dreams, and so it makes good sense to see these without putting people into the foreground. The essays are cogent and work well as an introduction to the photos. Buy the book, and you'll be seeing the highway in a different light from then on.
Rating: 
Summary: Mundanely bad
Review: This book didnt sit well with me. While the printing is good the premise of the book, that these photographs have documentary value, is false. Mr Brouws has staged several of the photographs with a 1970's model american car. Disturbing considering the photographs are mostly dated the early 1990's. Gaudy use of color throghout with poor composition in more than one instance. Nothing original at all.It seems as if the photographer is emulating the photographs of Wim Wenders, Stephen Shore and Steve Fitch albeit with a square camera. Heavily influenced for sure but unfortunately no original artisitic vision. Mundanely bad in my opinion and not art. This boook belongs in the pantheon of motorbooks publications imho.
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