The Fifty-Year Texas Road Trip: On Assignment from Earth to Uncertain

Ride shotgun with writer-photographer Randy Mallory on his fifty-year road trip exploring the endlessly fascinating people and places of Texas. The fourth-generation Texan spent a five-decade career traveling every part of the Lone Star State on assignments for statewide magazines and tourism agencies. In more than two hundred photos and four reflective essays, his first photo retrospective offers what he found. At the turn of every page—just like the rounding of every bend—there are delightful and surprising places: a thunderhead billowing behind a spinning Ferris wheel, a Volkswagen Beetle hung from a giant oak, a steam-powered riverboat gliding through mossy swamps, and yard art of a pregnant woman playing electric guitar. Meet the proud and diverse people he encountered: an organic farmer with a UFO museum, rural church members at a foot-washing ceremony, an adventurer riding the highway in a wind-powered sail trike, and five US presidents sharing the same stage.

The Fifty-Year Texas Road Trip: On Assignment from Earth to Uncertain is drawn from thousands of images contained in the Randy Mallory Collection at the University of North Texas. The collection and this book serve as a colorful and telling record of one photographer’s attempt to capture Texas’s sense of place during an important and ever-changing half century. The breadth of his career (1972–2022) allows the book to showcase many aspects of Texas history and culture that are gone or are rapidly fading away. A foreword by Dan K. Utley, former chief historian for the Texas Historical Commission, places Mallory’s photography in perspective as a valuable resource in the necessary work of chronicling history as it evolves around us every day.