David Hockney’s Pearblossom Highway., 11–18th April 1986, #2 is not just a photograph. It’s a conceptual highway, a map of vision, and a radical statement on how we see.
Created through hundreds of individual Polaroid shots and assembled into a sprawling photographic collage, it stands as one of Hockney’s most iconic “joiners” a term he coined for these multi frame photographic compositions that break from traditional perspective.
A Journey into the Desert and into Vision.
The work originated during a road trip Hockney took with friend and curator Jonathan Hooper through California’s Mojave Desert. The setting was Pearblossom Highway, a quiet, unremarkable stretch near Palmdale. But through Hockney’s lens, this seemingly mundane road became the site of a visual experiment, a clash of time, space, and perception.
“I wanted to depict what you see when you drive along a road, not what a camera sees,” Hockney explained. “We don’t see with just one eye, or from one position, and we don’t see everything in an instant.”
This challenge to the single vanishing point, the hallmark of Renaissance and photographic perspective, lies at the core of Pearblossom Hwy.
Breaking the Frame: Composition and Technique
At first glance, Pearblossom Highway. resembles a photographic image of a desert road. But closer inspection reveals a shimmering mosaic of 700+ photos, each taken from a different angle or at a slightly different time. Every element road signs, shrubs, drink cans, the car mirror, are all deliberately emphasised, flattened, or warped. The collage technique allows Hockney to build the image with visual hierarchy. The STOP sign, for example, is oversized and assertive. The viewer is pulled not into a vanishing point, but around the surface. The road becomes not a path of recession but of encounter.
“Photography freezes time,” Hockney once said, “but I wanted to stretch time. I wanted to make a photograph that described how we really experience looking.”
Left Eye / Right Eye: Dual Vision and Meaning
One of the most striking aspects of Pearblossom Hwy. is the way it reflects the difference between left-eye and right-eye vision. The left side of the collage features a chaotic jumble of roadside signs, debris, and man-made clutter. The right side, in contrast, shows the open road — a calm, unbroken ribbon stretching into distance.
Some critics interpret this as a metaphor: one eye focused on distraction and consumption, the other on journey and potential. Hockney has said it’s about duality — the fractured way we construct reality as we look and move through the world.
“We see with memory and movement. The eye is connected to the brain. Cameras aren’t.”
From Joiners to Photographic Drawings
Pearblossom Highway. represents a high point in Hockney’s "joiner" period, which began in the early 1980s. Frustrated with the camera’s limitations, he began using Polaroids to build composite portraits and landscapes that better reflected his experience of space and time. These works evolved into what he later termed “photographic drawings” collages that function more like paintings, where the viewer’s eye is directed by composition rather than lens.
Unlike the frozen instant of a traditional photo, Pearblossom Hwy. is made over several days (April 11–18, 1986), recording light shifts, movement, and position. It becomes an accumulation, not a snapshot, a time-based construction that invites repeated viewing.
Featuring in other Hockney's
In recent years, Pearblossom Highway has gained renewed attention through its prominent inclusion in Hockney’s largescale photographic drawing A Bigger Card Players (2015). There, a printed reproduction of Pearblossom Highway. is visible on the rear wall of the interior scene, positioned above a chair, a clever act of self-reference that highlights the continuity between Hockney’s early photographic explorations and his later experiments in digital and spatial collage. It also signals the central role Pearblossom Highway. plays in his evolving theory of perspective and picture-making.
Why the Joiners Matter: Legacy and Vision
Hockney’s joiners and photographic drawings are central to understanding his lifelong artistic quest: to represent how we actually see through time, with both eyes, and with attention that shifts and returns.
While the Renaissance tradition of linear perspective teaches the viewer to look into a single, fixed space, Hockney’s joiners reject this illusion of stillness. They restore to the image what photography removed — movement, memory, choice, and embodied vision.
“I realised the limitation of photography was the limitation of a single viewpoint,” Hockney wrote. “But our eyes dart around constantly. We don’t see like cameras.”
This radical idea has influenced not only contemporary art but photography, film, digital media, and even virtual reality. His joiners paved the way for later works using fax machines, iPads, and high definition video walls. Each shares the same driving force: to rethink how pictures can reflect real human seeing.
In short, Hockney’s joiners mark a turning point not just in his own career, but in the history of visual representation.
Notable Exhibitions Featuring Pearblossom Highway.
“David Hockney: A Bigger Picture” — Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2012
“David Hockney: Photographs” — The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
“David Hockney: Current” — National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2016–17
“David Hockney: 25” — Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2025
Collector’s Note
Although Pearblossom Highway. is not available as a traditional limited edition print, its significance has made related posters, catalogues, and joiner works highly sought after.
Key collector highlights include:
Exhibition Posters featuring Pearblossom Hwy. from major Hockney retrospectives
Original Joiner Prints (of other works) that reflect the same philosophy of layered vision
Photography Books such as David Hockney: Cameraworks (1984) and Hockney on Photography (2000)
Final Thoughts:A Road to Seeing
In Pearblossom Highway, David Hockney built a road not just through the California desert, but through the limitations of photography, through art history, and through the act of looking itself. It remains one of his most enduring and intellectually rich works a vivid example of his belief that “the world is very beautiful if you look at it.”
It’s not a highway in the conventional sense. It’s a visual philosophy in asphalt and light one that continues to echo across his entire career and the broader visual culture.