The Blur of a Car Ride: 2016

Photography by: Daniel Rauschenbach and Emily Coelho

The Blur of a Car Ride is a series of photographs captured throughout the car rides between Youngstown and Lima, Ohio in late 2015. 

There is a bit to know about a car ride alongside me, “I can literally not stop talking”. The whole presence of sharing a close space with someone and not talking happens to freak me out almost as much as Starfish or even driving. 

As you travel west from Youngstown you pass through many city’s such Akron, Canton, Mansfield, and then ending up in Lima. But there is a blur of small towns along the way.

Lodi, Ohio- Pop. 2746- Home of the Sweet Corn Festival

Ashland, Ohio- Pop. 20,362- “The World Headquarters of Nice People”

Bucyrus, Ohio- Pop. 12362- “The Small City in the Middle of Everywhere”

Beaverdam, Ohio- Pop. 382- I didn’t see a beaver dam

Traveling at seventy miles an hour if we were lucky you notice things coming towards you. Words on a barn, animals dead on the side of the road, and the occasional conversation pick me up. But those were also sometimes a blur.

As you travel you notice people lawns and sometimes people show off by having a couple thousand acres of cornfields. “That’s a ha-ha, and not a insult to Ohio’s farmers.” Emily would point out every farms pond and how they were dyed blue. 

As we would get closer to the other side of the state and the conversations, time spent laughing, and the banana chips bought at Grandpa’s Cheese Barn in Mansfield, Ohio brought us closer. Same about most trips with anyone one, conversation helps you grow and learn about the other person.

These trips across the state of Ohio visually created a conversation to help me form a blurred relationship with this part of the state.  Some places I was unsure of but now greet as familiar markers along this route.