Max Mikulecky

Max Mikulecky is an editorial and documentary photographer living and working in New York City. As a Kansas native, travel and exploration were an essential part of Max’s upbringing. He became interested in investigating the history of people and places around him while documenting his own. While he has now broadened his environment and pursuits as a transplant to New York, Max still remains rooted in Midwestern nostalgia.

Along the Santa Fe

“When you jumped off from the west bank of the Missouri into the plains country you said goodbye to the best and worst civilization and entered a region in which the life lived and the people who lived it did not belong at all in the Nineteenth Century or the Occidental world.” — The Newton Republican, 1939

Stretching 403 miles diagonally across the Kansas landscape, the old Santa Fe Trail was just that – a trail. Today, Highway 56 follows that trail as it runs through the Flint Hills and many small, curious towns along the way.

The two-lane highway connects Main Street to Main Street from one small town to the next. Some towns flourished and some only leave traces from another time. The aim of this ongoing project is to observe and document the small towns the modern day trail connects. The future of these small towns is uncertain.

To view more of Maxs’ work please visit his website.