A Path of Impermanence: life along a highway expansion
A Path of Impermanence: life along a highway expansion is a documentary photo project of the people, places, and landscapes impacted by a large-scale highway expansion in Austin, Texas. The images and interview quotes, collected from March-September 2024, speak to broader themes of displacement, community, memory, and change. All photographs were shot on 120mm film with a medium format camera.
The I-35 Capital Express Central Project is currently underway, the beginning of potentially a decade of construction to widen the main highway that runs through Austin, Texas. It is the largest expansion of I-35 in Austin’s history and more than 50 businesses are being displaced. Many of the small businesses found here have been a part of Austin’s cultural landscape for years. A Chinese teahouse, a beloved local newspaper, a family-owned Mexican restaurant, a crystal and rock shop, a vampire goth lounge, a Spanish-immersion daycare— each of these establishments and more contain their own unique histories and communities, and as I discovered, are often safe third spaces for their patrons.
While I was doing archival research for the project, I looked through visual records of I-35’s divisive development over the past century, and the absence of people was pronounced. Mainly I noticed the lack of portraits and testimonies of the individuals experiencing and enduring a change in their lives outside of their control. The very communities and identities that have been traditionally neglected and historically underrepresented in archival and artistic spaces. My hope was to produce a thoughtful and nuanced account of what will soon not exist in its current form, and have my work primarily be a vessel through which the stories of those impacted could be witnessed.
In October 2024, I had a photo exhibit of this project at Future Front House in East Austin. The show included photos and interview quotes, as well as site-specific artifacts selected by project participants. The opening night included a panel Q&A between Rosa Fry, Programs Manager at Preservation Austin, and small business owners Alma of Escuelita del Alma, So-Han of West China Tea, and Jay of Cafe Hornitos. Additionally, there was an interactive element where attendees could share their thoughts and feelings via written note cards and place them in memory boxes around the venue.
Links:
https://futurefronttexas.org/events/2024/lizmoskowitz
Keza, Aster’s Ethiopian Restaurant
Alphonsina, Aster’s Ethiopian Restaurant
Short Stop
Rick, Chicas Bonitas
Hiral, Rodeway Inn
Taqueria Los Altos
“I work for the post office, I’m a letter carrier. I've been working in this area for about 12 years, and I've been coming here to this restaurant ever since I started working. I take my lunch here. I come around two o'clock every day, and I usually order the same thing. I forgot the name of it, but it's fajita chicken. And it's a plate. So you get rice and beans. I usually eat that, and then 2:30, I'm headed back to the route. I started coming and they were nice. They’d give me water. That's how it started, getting ice and water. And then, over time, just talking to them and getting to know them. And then I just kept on coming. They’re like family here. I've been to their house before, they invited me over. I've been to their daughter's birthday. I’ll be able to go to the new location on my day off. It's off my route, so I won't be able to go during the day. I will be going over there for breakfast.” - Lenny, Patron, Taqueria Los Altos
Stars Cafe
Stacy, Stars Cafe
“I have been coming here since 1997. I moved to Austin in 1997. And I’ve seen various owners come and go and now the highway is coming. I come basically every day, between six and eight, and I usually stay for an hour and a half or so. If I do order anything, I order the Charlie named after myself. It's a sandwich, bagel with an over hard egg, bacon and cheese. And a coffee. In fact, my coffee is always free. I grew up high functioning autistic, and autistics tend to get into rivulets, and they stay there, get into a groove. And so, for example, I met two people within the first week that I moved down here, and those two people are still my best friends. So this restaurant and two best friends all within the first couple weeks that I moved down here. You miss where you've been going somewhere for a long time, and I will miss this place. Of course I'm hoping that they are able to find a different location, and I will follow them to that location.” - Charles, Patron, Stars Cafe
Escuelita del Alma
"Why is Escuelita part of the Austin community? I’m going to try and do this without getting emotional. First of all, it was the first Spanish immersion preschool in the city. The reason that we became Spanish immersion was really because of my mom's background, but that was a need that up until then, no one had filled. And on top of that, it was really a ground up and community effort. It was my mom there on the weekends, working for herself, finding staff who had just migrated from their respective Latin American countries, serving community members who up until then had not had or seen representation for themselves in their schooling. I’m not surprised that the expansion is once again happening eastward, because the development on the west side of 35 is much more profitable and high impact with things like the university football stadium and massive concert venue development and hospitals. They had to pick the end of the stick and they chose the families and the small businesses that have made up the fabric of Austin, many of which aren't Black and brown owned anymore because those residents have already been displaced. But some of which, like ours, still are, are the ones who are having to once again make way for this development instead of the big corporations who can handle relocating. Whereas we, without financial assistance, probably would have had to shut our doors once and for all. I feel in the current moment a little bit overwhelmed, but in the long term generally excited about the relocation. It was kind of a blessing in disguise, we had already been facing so many hardships being right next to I-35 throughout the years, feeling frustrated with having to be here and having to deal with all of the cons that come with the traffic and the potential crime and the vandalism. And because of the relocation and because of the fact that TxDOT, for better or worse, is forcing us out of here and had to provide us money to move. Without that money, we would not have been able to purchase a building. And now we're in the position where we hopefully never, ever have to move again. And that is super exciting.” - Alma, Co-Director, Escuelita del Alma
Saul, Cafe Hornitos
“My parents opened up this restaurant back in 2006. But prior to that, my dad worked many years. He came into the States when he was 15 years old. I was born and raised here. So I know we do have that energy of old Austin. I am going to miss that if we do end up going out of business. These are the little places that Austin started to lose when it started to grow. Austin back then, it was real relaxed. Everyone was real nice and it's just nothing like it is now, it's completely different. Like I drive by the skyline and I'm like, where is Austin? And you don't see all the buildings that were there anymore. It's all these new buildings that covered up all the old ones. It's just the love was there, you know, it was a different time. My mom said it upsets her more because there won't be a memory of their first business, the first restaurant they ever owned. It'll be wiped out, so there won't ever be an old building they could point at and say, ‘hey, that's the restaurant we owned.’ The land won’t even be here, we'll drive over it. We can't point our finger and say, ‘hey, there's that restaurant we owned one time in our lives.’ At this point, my parents are going to let me take over. So it'll close the door and maybe open up a new one for me. But at the same time, it's getting difficult with the relocation. It does concern me. There's a couple of days where it does get a little stressful. There's other days where I think, you know what? We're going to be alright. We're going to relocate and we'll be okay. So it's like I said, it's a 50/50. Some days are good, some days are bad. My hope for the restaurant in the long run is that people will recognize us as being in Austin, family-owned and that we've been here for such a long time, we're born and raised here in Austin. We are Austin.” - Jay, Manager, Cafe Hornitos
Nature's Treasures
Chris, Nature's Treasures
“I've been a part of this store ever since it's opened. When they first opened it, somebody told me, ‘don't worry, you'll be here.’ And so here I am. I've done pricing, and they put me as a greeter, and couldn't keep me at the door, because I like to run around. And so I named myself the floor fairy. I'm very grateful to be in this place. I just love people, and it's just a blessing for me to be with people. At this time in my life, who could have a better job for two days a week? People come in and they are interested in improving themselves, or to find out what they can do to make a difference for themselves or make them feel healed. What can heal them, make them feel safe and happy, because we're in tumultuous times right now, that will be happening for a while, and so I feel that there's just a great benefit to know more about the stones. I love the stones, and so the stones, I think, love me.” - Magdalena, Employee, Nature's Treasures
“No one here knew about Gong Fu Cha and Chinese tea. And so I realized the only way that I would even get people to buy this tea is that I would have to serve it to them so they could understand what you do with it. I wanted people to be able to taste it being made the way it's supposed to be made, so that they have some sort of point of reference, and also to understand the context in which it exists. Trying to take something cultural out of its cultural context, is the first step towards appropriating it. And so I wanted to give people the true, authentic cultural context behind Chinese tea. A lot of people don't drink alcohol, so alcohol is not inclusive. But that's the default thing that we do in our society, you go get a drink with somebody. But actually it's very exclusionary. Tea is the great unifier. Tea is the most inclusive. There's nothing more inclusive than tea, because everyone can drink tea… It's just a bunch of people coming together, and they don't have to have anything in common. They can just show up however they are. When you have an inclusive space where people who are excluded from other parts of society are welcome, they will congregate there. If I was to try to start this business again today, I could not do it the way that I did. You cannot bootstrap in 2024, America is not a place where you can bootstrap a business anymore. If you don't have capital, then you can't do it. And if you don't have access to capital, you can't get it. It's basically a miracle that we got this money from the government, and that is the reason that we're able to buy a property, and we never would have been able to otherwise, it would have been a decade before we could save up enough money to put down a down payment on a property, and it wouldn't be in East Austin.” - So-Han, Owner, West China Tea House
Arthur, West China Tea House
West China Tea House
“I came from a small military town in Killeen, Texas. You're either a drunk soldier or you're someone who's trying to hurry up and graduate to get out of there. So having the Glass Coffin here and discovering it was amazing. It’s a very quiet community. But when they're there, they're there. Very close knit. Everyone is super supportive. Everyone is a creative. It's very much a safe space too. Especially being a Black woman. I was definitely not expected to be super welcomed into the scene. I was totally wrong. The scene here in Austin is amazing. I feel super comfortable. This is a place that gave back to the community, built a community, the goth and alt community. Drag and trans people, who are still being targeted by the Texas government, had a spot here to come and perform and make their art and just exist in this place. I want this place to be remembered as, just a piece of time, a place where Joey [the owner] created. It’s for vampire lovers. It's for the goth, the alt, the misunderstood. The people who want a safe space to just be themselves and be here and shop at a vampire parlor.” - Victoria, Patron, The Glass Coffin: Vampire Parlour
The Glass Coffin: Vampire Parlour
Hector, Hector’s Barbershop
“I came to Austin in May of 1977. One of the reasons why I came here was to turn one of the theaters in South Austin into an X-rated movie house. And then I ended up coming to the Chronicle, working in accounting in 1993, so I've been here with the Chronicle since February 1993. But I've known Nick and Louis since probably the 80s, when they used to review movies for the Daily Texan when they were students at the university. It's the longest job I've ever worked. I never expected to retire here, but it enabled me to be able to do what I wanted to. I kind of dropped out of college, so everything I learned is from the school of hard knocks. I thank Nick and Louis for giving me a job and keeping me here for as long as I have been here. It's definitely enabled me to live the lifestyle that I had been living, not having to go back to school and do a corporate thing.” - Cindy, Employee, The Austin Chronicle
“We were in there for 33 years. We bought it in 1991 and our son was born the next year and that was basically the first place he went when he came home from the hospital. He was born in Brackenridge, which is, of course, now torn down itself, right down the interstate. We brought him to the office. He saw the office before he saw his crib, and he's now our art director. So he grew up in the business. He grew up in that building.” “Being on I-35 is a mixed blessing. It was great being able to give people directions. Everybody knows where I-35 is. But it was noisy. Noise, the pollution, not great. The insulation was pretty good, because there were those bricks and they built it solidly. When we moved in, the inspector said two things I remember. One was the foundation would hold a 30 story building, and if there were nuclear war, he knew where he was coming to hide out in the basement. Every week we're telling stories. Every week we're telling stories about our community. And that's the through line really, I mean, and that's how we started, and that's how we're still going by the skin of our teeth for 40 odd years, some odder than others, one week at a time. And, you know, we're just a newspaper. It's what we do.” - Nick (Co-Founder) and Susan, The Austin Chronicle
The Austin Chronicle
