Tonight Lounge includes Lohr’s record of the desert towns of Arizona, Texas, Nevada, and Utah as well her evocative photographs of the Texas - Mexican border town of El Paso - another ongoing series with which Lohr seeks to distill and expose contemporary political and social anxieties through contrasts in its fluctuating townscape. Loosely arranged in chronological order, the book begins with works taken in 2010, representative of Lohr’s exploration of the outer city neighbourhoods of the East Coast, and then charts her movement out from there to the West by Greyhound bus. The publication also features Lohr’s latest body of work, taken whilst travelling across the American Midwest over the last year.Lohr’s journeys through nameless streets, and forgotten highways form the basis of her numerous still life photographic series. Travelling alone around the American Southwest by train, Greyhound bus and on foot periodically since 2010, her pictures are, for the most part, devoid of people. Instead, an alternative portrait of the individuals who populate these spaces is built up through the traces that they leave behind in fleeting landscapes, hand-painted signage, the crumbling facades of once ornate buildings, bars, motels and suburban houses.The experience of the unknown, together with the heightened sensations of both wonderment and fear that come with it, is em- braced in Lohr’s focus on the neglected interiors and faded facades that populate much of America. By casting her eye on their overlooked details, she shows what it means to see even the most ubiquitous of spaces with unfamiliar eyes.
