Route 66 Exhibition In Downtown Tulsa Shows Another Side To The Mother Road

A Route 66 exhibition on display right now in downtown Tulsa tells another side of the Mother Road's story. It is a story a tourist probably wouldn't go looking for, but an award-winning photographer did.  

It's not about the flashy neon signs or popular roadside attractions, but the perhaps otherwise forgotten faces along the way. 

"Main Street: The Lost Dream of Route 66" is a collection of exclusively black and white photos, lacking the color you might expect to see along the Mother Road.  

"That's what people always think about the highway. Is the flashiness. I think we always wanna see color. And we want to see things the way that they might not actually really be in real life,” Caitlin Keating said.  

Her dad, Edward Keating, spent 11 years documenting what life was like along the famous highway. The former New York Times photographer died two years ago. Now, his family continues to share his work. 

"It's not just his work, right? It's people's stories. And he wouldn't want that to end when his own life did. So to continue to tell these stories and his work, even after his passing, is just something so important to us,” Caitlin said.  

The exhibition at the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities is the first time the collection is on display somewhere along Route 66. Sean Latham is the director there.  

"It tells an entirely different story about Route 66. It reminds us that it's not just sort of a street of dreams or a highway of dreams, but it also leads, now, through some of the most economically distressed and troubled parts of our country,” Latham said.  

There are about 30 pictures on display in the exhibition, which is really just a sample of what's in Edward’s book. 

"Tulsa's just the beginning. It was one of his favorite places,” Caitlin said.  

Caitlin said after the exhibit in Tulsa wraps up on November 18, plans are being made to take the collection on tour from Santa Monica to Chicago. Bringing the pictures and stories on a journey back to the places they came from.