The photo film clip was created in collaboration with Adrian Kelterborn
Magnum in Motion, NY in the rooms of the Neue Schule für Fotografie, Berlin 2010
The book Journeying 66 – Awarded
with the predicate „German Photo Book Award – Nominated 2013“
These photographs by Rosemarie Zens, a crossover-artist who works in both
photography and literature, are testimonies to the legendary Route 66 and our
collective 1960s way of life.
Over 40 years ago, Zens followed the siren call of freedom on the road. She then
retraced her journey in 2010, witnessing how the highway had in the meantime
been transformed into a kind of museum.
Out of a mixture of private memories and allusions to social ideologies and media
myths, the photographer has developed a unique pictorial language. What interests
her most is how the myths of the road can be related – from image to reflection to
image – to create an absurdist, almost surreal and yet contemplative perspective.
From the very beginning the artist is confronted with the question: is it possible
to subvert a myth without ironically breaking it, to modify it with one’s own insertions?
This myth – long an element of our collective memory – holds in our subconscious the
images from John Steinbeck’s socially critical novel „The Grapes of Wrath“ (1939)
woven together into the all-American going on the road – there’s always something
to find that is better, there is something new down the road, around the bend.
Essays by Rosemarie Zens and Wolfgang Zurborn
Selected title German Photo Book Award 2013
Hardcover
30 x 23 cm
96 pages
43 color ills.
German/English
Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2012
ISBN 978-3-86828-275-7
$ 45,-
Journeying 66 may be ordered through
amazon.com or
www.cbsd.com (Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, USA/Canada
Signed copies are available by contacting the artist
Review and announcement
Freddy Langer March 14, 2013
PhotoEye 2013
KEHRER Publishing House
DIE ZEIT June 27, 2012:
The American myth of the road
Being on the road and taking photographs belong together. On her 66th birthday, Rosemarie Zens set off – a route she had traveled in 1966: Route 66. The artist was looking for traces of memory and the feeling of life at that time. She asks, „Is it possible to subvert a myth without breaking it ironically, to modify it through one’s own interventions?“ Route 66 is the road of hope par excellence: perhaps there’s always something to find that is better something new around the bend. Zens‘ photos appear in the illustrated book Journeying 66 (Kehrer Verlag). (Translated into English)
GEO Magazin Juni 27, 2012:
In 1966, photographer Rosemarie Zens traveled the legendary Route 66 through the USA for the first time. At the age of 66, she returned to follow in the footsteps of her first journey.
More than 40 years ago, Rosemarie Zens followed the call of freedom „on the road“ – in the spirit of the 60s. In 2010, she returned to this legendary place and discovered how the road had changed: from a destination of longing to a museum. Route 66 has become a symbol of the call for freedom.
Nevertheless, it is not nostalgia that drives her. She wants to depict being on the road itself. In her images, the photographer mixes private memories with social ideologies and media myths… (Translated into English)