“Encountering the American west for the first time in the early 1970s, I became fascinated with the landscapes and iconography of mobile homes. In a previous century Americans migrated west in Prairie Schooners to become farmers or shopkeepers. After the Second World War they continued this ‘Westward Ho!’, but now in commercially-fabricated mobile homes, often to retirement. These new pioneers clustered in communities that transformed the western landscape and its built environment through a new architecture of mobility.

Mobile home manufacturers produce a range of styles with architectural references that animate cultural aspirations or memories of home and community left behind. After choosing a basic style, new owners make individual touches to the exterior and lawn that transform the generic into the personal. Viewed from a surrounding hillside, mobile home parks look like arabesques of uniform aluminum boxes. On close observation, however, they reveal a rich flora and fauna of personal expression and longing for both individuality and community.” – John Schott, from the Preface

The images in Mobile Homes 1975-1976 were made with an 8x10-inch Deardorff view camera in California during 1975 and 1976. This project followed photographs of Route 66 motels in 1973 and 1974, work which was included in “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape”, at George Eastman House in 1975 and John Schott | Route 66: 1973–1974, Nazraeli Press, 2014 (NZ Library: Set 1).