Picturing the M62: The Trans-pennine motorway: A work in progress

Carving out the Trans-Pennine M62 was, at the time of its construction, one of the most difficult and ambitious road-construction projects ever attempted. As motorists we travel across the Pennines within a matter of several minutes, and thus the strangeness of the M62 is easy to dismiss. Travellers can detach themselves from the landscape through which they pass, and the irreversible impact of the motorway on the environment is made invisible. The efforts of the thousands of construction workers who laboured, often in appalling conditions, to construct a road that facilitates the travel of tens of thousands of people every day disappear in the blink of an eye. This article discusses a photographic project to capture the relationship of the human to the landscape in a post-industrial context, configuring that relationship within the theoretical frame of the ‘anthropocene’. What, then. is the M62 today?