Max Jourdan

Westway

Max Jourdan grew up in the Westway's concrete shadow. As a teenager it was an icon for freedom, movement and speed:

"…rushing past rooftops and the monolithic cluster of tower blocks in a speeding car, we would sense the first light of daybreak as we pushed westwards towards the dark and strangely coloured screen of crepuscular skies. For a few miles and brief minutes we slipped out of the system through a road construction, engineering loophole and really made our getaway."

Jourdan uses a cheap Russian panoramic camera, with a revolving lens. The photographs are taken from a fast moving car or from surrounding high rises as the sun sets to the west and the Westway rises for a brief moment above the urban sprawl. Capturing the illicit rush of leaving the city behind, these digitally printed images, up to two meters in length, give us a glimpse into a seemingly fictional landscape with a limitless horizon.

The Westway was the longest stretch of raised motorway in Europe when it opened in 1970. This controversial scheme radically redefined the urban landscape, cutting a huge swathe through west London Victorian architecture. A four-lane, rooftop carriageway, it imposes its sinuous mass and curvaceous form on the landscape and is the closest London gets to Le Corbusier's machine-age dream of a "vertical city" of towers and elevated motorways. In spite of the social and environmental impact the Westway has had on the communities it spans, thirty years on, it is still sexy.

Max Jourdan (b. Paris 1968) grew up in the United States and in Britain where he graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1992. Alongside his photography, he works as a documentary film director and is presently working on a documentary for Channel Four. He lives and works in London.

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