James McAnally, editor of Temporary Art Review recently asked Matthew Coolidge, founder of the Center for Land Use Interpretation [CLUI] how his vision of the manmade landscape forms a “cultural inscription” [for America] that can be read and interpreted, and what is the central narrative he sees in the inscription.

Matthew Coolidge replied, “Any central narrative shifts, depending on the angle of view. Our projects and programs may allude to a central narrative, but describe it more from its peripheral incidents, than its core….I suppose if you added it all up and had it assayed at any given point, it would 'amount' to something, but what I don’t know. I do know though, for sure, that everything around us is an inscription, from the transcontinental infrastructure to the configuration of cereal boxes in cupboards. All of this can be read, and describes systems, or phenomena, in a microcosmic or a macrocosmic way. Everything people do plays out on the land, and leaves a mark, visible or not. Everything humans do can be viewed from a land use perspective, and therefore can be explored for meaning. The stories contained by terrain are infinite, since terrain houses all of human endeavor.”

Here, from The CLUI Morgan Cowles Archive, are a selection of photographs that offer a very particular angle of view on the landscape that drivers might consider along the way.