I-45

I-45 is a photographic survey of four Sundown Towns (historically all-white communities that, through formal policy or violent enforcement, were unwelcoming to Black people after dark)—Corsicana, Centerville, Madisonville, and Willis—located along the Interstate 45 corridor between Denton and Houston, Texas.

This project traces the route I take home from school, transforming a personal passage into a reflective pilgrimage through landscapes marked by racial exclusion and historical amnesia. Each town is depicted through a pair of images: black-and-white photographs of the town overlaid with archival newspaper clippings documenting lynchings, contrasted with vivid color portraits of McMansions and ranch-style homes on the suburban outskirts.

By pairing the past with the present, I-45 explores the uneasy coexistence of historical violence and contemporary comfort, questioning what is remembered, what is erased, and who gets to call these places home.