Road tripping across 1970s America

After graduating Fordham College in 1972, Brooklyn native Larry Racioppo spent the summer driving around New York City in a yellow taxi cab. ​“I had no fixed schedule and was trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life,” he remembers. Then the answer came by pure serendipity: Racioppo and his friend, Ron, would road trip across the United States, visiting friends along the way.

By mid-century, the great American road trip was a rite of passage for Baby Boomers coming of age, inspiring a generation to go ​“on the road” in search of action and adventure. Racioppo was a veteran traveller who had made his first solo cross-country trip in an old Rambler Classic that he bought at a yard sale for $120 from Gilroy, California, back to Brooklyn. Over a period of four months, he visited Washington, Idaho, New Mexico, and Chicago before returning to New York. ​“After paying the toll on the Verrazano Bridge, I arrived home with $8,” he remembers.

Racioppo was making portraits of friends and family around in his Sunset Park neighbourhood, later published in his 2018 monograph, Brooklyn Before: Photographs, 1971 – 1983. ​“Having the camera made me feel more alert and interested in what was around me,” Racioppo says. 

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His friend Ron, a Vietnam vet, lived a few blocks away in his parents’ limestone house. The two met playing schoolyard basketball with mutual friends, and shared a love for photography. Ron was taking a semester break at Brooklyn College and wanted to ski in Colorado, while Racioppo wanted to visit friends in California. ​“Ron had a VW Bug and was willing to share the driving and costs of a trip out west,” Racioppo says. ​“We both had friends in cities where we could ​‘crash’ along the way.” 

In January 1973, they loaded the tiny car with a tent, sleeping bags, and cameras, then set off on a three-week trip across Atlanta, New Orleans, Santa Fe, and Las Vegas. ​“We camped outside as we crossed through New Mexico and Arizona. The bare landscape was inspiring and photographing in these open spaces felt more personal,” Racioppo says. ​“Sometimes we rented a motel room, and we played pickup basketball whenever we found an ongoing game.” 

When they reached Las Vegas, the two temporarily split up, Ron driving to Vail, Colorado, to ski and Racioppo flying to San Jose to see his friends in California’s southern Santa Clara Valley, where he had worked as a VISTA Volunteer from 1968 to 1970. ​“It was where I first began to photograph, so I felt at home with my camera,” he says. 

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Along the journey south to Atlanta, Racioppo made 73 Trip West, a series of 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 black and white roadside photographs, which he recently unearthed for the first time in over half a century. ​“When I made prints back in Brooklyn, I was surprised by how much I had been influenced by Walker Evans’ work, especially those in his masterpiece American Photographs,” Racioppo says. ​“I saw MOMA’s 1971 groundbreaking exhibit of his work and was blown away. He had photographed real people in real places, in black and white as I was doing at the time. His direct and simple (on the surface) photographs appealed to me both emotionally and intellectually.”

To see more of Larry Racioppo’s photography, visit his official website.

Miss Rosen is a freelance arts and photography writer, follow her on X.

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