In a country as vast and diverse as Canada, the road is symbolic of those things that connect us: our human urges to conquer, to overcome, to appropriate, to build, to make a mark, to communicate, to connect, to carve out territory, and above all, to get somewhere

In Roads, Mark Schacter uses the powerful medium of photography to explore these stories of human ambition and the desire to create a shared existence among natural landscapes, at once harsh, desolate, and beautiful Along the journey, he seeks to capture a sense of place, musing on how roads and their landscapes can reveal aspects of the multi-layered and elusive "Canadian essence "

Schacter's photographs-taken on, beside, and above roads all across Canada-are poignant and reflective Depicting scenes of urban intensity, small-town community, and wild grandeur, the photographs included in this striking collection will take the reader on a road trip along the meandering curves of the Canadian sense of self

I was born in Thunder Bay — a remote city in northwestern Ontario in the heart of the Canadian Shield. I left when I was 16, but the place has left a lasting impression on how I see the world and how I translate that vision into photography.
As a boy, accompanying my father on long road trips related to his business, I grew to love the rugged and empty northwestern Ontario landscape that was dotted with signs of feeble-looking human intervention. A lonely gas station, a makeshift paper mill town, an abandoned gold mine, the single-lane TransCanada highway: they seemed puny against the backdrop of billion-year-old pre-Cambrian bedrock, the big lakes and rivers, and the legions of blackflies and mosquitoes that were such an urgent reminder of nature's power over man.
Those boyhood impressions stuck with me for life. Much of my photography attempts to convey the smallness, frailty and transience of man's work in relation to the indifferent grandeur of the natural world.

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