Highway Oasis

Highway Oasis documents a journey of over 3,000 miles across Japan, living out of a van and sleeping in the car parks of service stations known as Michi no Eki. Travelling without a fixed route or guidebook, the journey was shaped by a desire to roam freely. The images focus on the in-between spaces: quiet service stations, weed-strewn car parks, and roadside attractions. A far cry from the postcard landscapes for which Japan is often known. The banality of these spaces became the focus, finding humour, beauty, and strangeness within them.

The title Highway Oasis is drawn from a service station visited during the trip. Over the course of the journey, the idea of a highway oasis evolved into a mindset: a search for a sense of contentment rooted in solitude and the act of making photographs.