OKC Zine Fest will highlight the iconic Route 66 with a photo exhibition featuring unique shots from a photographer’s month-long journey along the decommissioned highway.
The full exhibition contains 66 shots from the road, with a selection from Oklahoma. The display features photo prints and color zines — self-published mini booklets that present photos in series — from Indiana-based photographer Craig Kilgore, documenting his trip.
Kilgore’s collection focuses on connecting and contrasting contemporary American life along the famous American highway, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year.
This journey along Route 66 was not Kilgore’s first, as he traveled the road in 2003 as a part of his thesis on neon signage as a grad student.
“When I was in grad school, my thesis was on neon signage, old rusty and crusty neon signs … and part of that was I went on a partial trip of Route 66,” Kilgore said. “I’ve still been doing variations of this sense, so about 20 years, I’ve been active with doing series in different environments.”
Kilgore traveled the road again in March of 2024, covering the entire highway from Chicago to Los Angeles in 28 days to create the photo exhibition. He said he was inspired by curiosity on how Route 66 had changed since his previous trip.
“It hit me that it has been 20 years, and I was curious about how things change,” Kilgore said. “You know, what was different?”
What was intriguing to Kilgore about traveling Route 66 in March of 2024 was studying the highway in what he felt was a transitional time within America.
“The state of America at the time, it seemed like there was a big transition that was happening,” Kilgore said. “It was an interesting time to explore the Western part of the United States.”
While documenting his trip, Kilgore wanted to try to capture the highway without having a specific focus dictating his shoot.
“I quite consciously tried not to look for specifics. … I was hell bent on finding these neon signs, and I was almost oblivious to my surroundings,” Kilgore said. “Over the years, that has been my focus is what's around those old spots that are either abandoned or whatnot, so being open to what I find was my goal.”
However, there were some distinct things Kilgore was observing, including stores and structures that have grown in prominence since his first trip.
“When I was thinking about what kind of things have changed, I was looking out for things like wind farms and solar farms that have become more prominent over the last 20 years,” Kilgore said. “Things like dollar stores were something that has been a phenomenon that’s kind of changed the small town environment in many places.”
Kilgore said in his travels, he gained a love for the highway and sadness at it being less traveled.
“Part of the passion I have about Route 66 is that it is a decommissioned road so a lot of towns have been bypassed by interstate 40,” Kilgore said. “So a lot of those small towns have been diverted totally from that traffic.”
Kilgore said those small towns are the heart of the road and embody the nostalgia of Route 66 and rural America, so the Interstate bypassing them is a loss.
Kilgore’s artist statement accompanying the Route 66 photo series explores the effect of constant rerouting of the original road and capitalism leading to empty storefronts and bypassed towns, and states this is a focus of many of the collection’s photographs.
“They (small towns) used to be prominent on Route 66.Those travelers, that’s part of the joy that a lot of people have nostalgia about is that way to see America,” Kilgore said. “When you’re on the interstate, that’s something you got to make time for by getting off the road to go through the town.”
He said one of the main takeaways of his trip was getting to understand the common people’s experience through sharing.
“Things just kind of stand out, because the people are very open about the nature of the history,” Kilgore said. “Like in Tulsa, there’s a convergence of four or five (reservations) that butt up against each other, all in one place, and Tulsa has a very dynamic input from the community. There with those tribes they have a voice.”
Kilgore cites Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” as an influence on how he understood the stories along Route 66.
“A ‘People's History United States’ is a narrative of the common people's experiences throughout the whole history of America, starting before the Puritans got to the east coast of the United States,” Kilgore said. “That type of history where you learned about what you weren't taught in school, that was one of my biggest takeaways from Oklahoma, because being from Indiana, we have some of that type of history too, of displacement like the Potawatomi.”
Kilgore’s full Route 66 photo exhibition, titled “American Monomyth: Route 66 Today,” is currently on display in his hometown of South Bend, Indiana.The OKC Zine Fest will feature two of his Oklahoma-focused zines and larger photo prints.
“My hometown had their first inaugural Zine Fest last April, and I wanted to do some zines for that, and I put some of my photographs in that format,” Kilgore said. “So that 2024 series I broke up by state, and I did two issues on Oklahoma.”
The OKC Zine Fest will also mark the debut of one of Kilgore’s new color zine featuring all 66 images from his trip.
Kilgore said he enjoys the creativity and flexibility that zines provide.
“That’s the beauty of them. What I usually tell people is zines are basically self published booklets, they could be anything really,” Kilgore said. “When you go to a Zine Fest, there might be a couple people that are doing photo zines that are largely just photographs, but you might have people that self publish poetry.”
He added that zines can serve as a powerful outlet for underrepresented voices, as you can distribute ideas freely without censorship.
“This is a medium that marginalized groups can utilize, or marginalized people can tell their stories in a way that is very personal and enlightening to others,” Kilgore said.
Oklahoma City Zine Fest is 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at The Sanctuary located at 1012 N. Indiana Ave. More information can be found online.
This story was edited by Madisson Cameron. Gretchen Schultz copy edited this story.
