Ben Huff: The Last Road North
at the Alaska State Museum
February 1 – March 16, 2013
"Completed in 1974, Alaska’s Dalton Highway (known locally as the haul road) is the northernmost road in America. At 489 miles, the predominantly dirt road follows the upper half of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and is maintained exclusively as the transportation route for the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay. The road was opened to the public in 1994. My journeys on the road began with a day trip, with my wife, to the Arctic Circle in the summer of 2007. On our way home, I imagined what unfurled behind us in the rear view, atop this dirt thread, shadowed by steel, serving as the physical and psychological line between wilderness and progress. I was intoxicated by the long hours making photographs and the countless miles behind the wheel - time punctuated with heartbreaking beauty and broken windshields. I exposed my first sheet of film from the road later that fall, and the last sheet in the Summer of 2012. The haul road is void of stoplights and stop signs. Void of crossroads and shortcuts, fast food and coffee shops. Here are only the necessities of oil. Only this road crosses the Yukon River, Arctic Circle, Brooks Range, the North Slope and eventually terminates at the Arctic Ocean. North or South - advancing or retreating. The Last Frontier, yet here we are."
Ben Huff
2013
Photographs by Sara Boesser
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316 mile. waiting trucks, Chandalar Shelf
2011
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173 mile. outhouse, Finger Mt. wayside
2008
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249 mile. Kevin
2011
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179 mile. help
2010
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286 mile. Steven and Alice
2011
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250 mile. rooms available, Coldfoot
2010
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250 mile. crash board, Coldfoot
2008
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34 mile. party, Chatanika River
2009
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323 mile. Thomas
2012
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83 mile. midnight light, driving
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45 mile. Ed
2011
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315 mile. facing south, Chandalar Shelf
2012
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75 mile. Alfred
2011
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117 mile. headlights in winter
2010
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367 mile. road and pipeline
2009
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488 mile. approaching Deadhorse
2008
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489 mile. Dalton Style, Deadhorse
2010
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489 mile. oil rig, Deadhorse
2010
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