"A love of beauty, a desire to share, and a serious case of wanderlust," says Sandi Wheaton, when asked what led her to become a photographer. Makes sense, considering her exhibition at CONTACT has her exploring the haunted towns and lonely highways of Route 66.

"I stumbled across Route 66 for the first time in 1995, driving from Arizona to California on a road trip with a friend. I didn't know much about it at the time, but I took some photos of some cool ruins and filed it away as an intriguing place to return to one day. As I got more serious about photography years later, I started shooting a lot in the California desert. During one of my trips, I realized that Route 66 was not far from where I was shooting. I knew about an architecturally-interesting old place on the route called Roy's Motel/Café that I wanted to photograph at Amboy, about an hour away," Wheaton recalls.

"When I got to Roy's, I was stunned to see a sign announcing that the town was for sale. Not just the buildings, but the town of Amboy itself! That piqued my interest and I got curious about what was in these little pit stops along Route 66, so I drove it between Needles and Barstow, CA. I couldn't believe how isolated and abandoned the area was. There were all of these well-preserved ruins out there in the desert that filled my mind with questions about the many, many people who lived along and passed through this historic 'Mother Road.' I shot several rolls of black and white infrared film on that trip - that was in 2004. When I heard about the 'Still Revolution' theme for this year's CONTACT, I felt that the Route 66 images would work well with the theme - so I went back in January to shoot more for this exhibition. Incredibly, the abandoned '62 Chrysler that I had photographed way back in 1995 was still sitting out there, more or less intact after 14 years."

Wheaton's images appear to be frozen in the past-and she honoured the timelessness of her subject with the process of creating the photos. "These images were all captured on Kodak HIE 35mm black and white infrared film, which is no longer being made. The theme of CONTACT 2009 made me think about the digital revolution in photography and how so many non-digital products are disappearing, including my all-time favourite film, Kodak HIE. I saw a parallel between how the building of the interstate highway system made Route 66 obsolete and how digital photography is making a lot of traditional photographic technology obsolete. In light of this idea, it was important to me to keep my exhibit 'digital-free.' These photographs were all printed using the traditional tray processing method in a wet darkroom."

Wheaton has always been inspired by unique places. In fact, a trip to Joshua Tree, in Southern California, was a big part of her artistic evolution. She fell in love with a medium that "helped portray the bizarre beauty of that special place."

But photography's power goes beyond it's ability to portray beauty. Wheaton describes photography's greatest strength as "its ability to incite change. The fact that one instant frozen in time in a single frame can, say, help change public opinion about a war, for example, Nick Ut's 'Napalm Girl,' is testimony to the amazing power of photography."

Town For Sale is on display at Deborah Friesen Architect in The Junction.
386 Pacific Ave. Mon, Tues, Thurs: 11 am-5 pm. Sat: 12-4 pm.
www.sandiwheaton.com

CONTACT according to Sandi: The other exhibits in The Junction, Still Revolution: Suspended in Time at MOCCA, Regular 8 at Wynuck/Tuck Gallery, Still Water at Peak Gallery, Close Distance at Harbourfront, Magnum Photos: State of Conflict at CONTACT Gallery, Forward, Looking Back at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography