Feininger’s photograph, taken in Seligman, Arizona,  is packed with “information”—cars, a bus, human figures, a gas station, a garage, towering clouds, an arrow-straight ribbon of road to the horizon—but it’s the emptiness of the space that is most attractive. It can be read as a metaphor for the blank slate that innumerable people have sought in the West. Here is where you can redefine yourself, the scene suggests. Reimagine yourself. Reinvent yourself. Then keep moving.

Feininger, who was trained as an architect at the famous Bauhaus school in Germany before fleeing to the United States, brought a strict sense of structure, scale, and composition to his work. To achieve the dramatic contrast seen here, Feininger utilized a red lens filter. The filter absorbed the blue light of the desert sky, turning it into an intense, ink-black backdrop, which made the billowing white cumulus clouds violently pop forward. This stark contrast, paired with the straight road vanishing into the distance, perfectly framed the American Dream of absolute freedom and infinite possibilities.

In 1913, Egede-Nissen made her silent movie debut in Copenhagen with the Dania Biofilm Kompagni film Scenens Børn. Following the advice of Norwegian theatre director Bjørn Bjørnson, she relocated to Berlin in 1914 and quickly appeared in dozens of Danish and German silent films.

At just 24 years old, she established her own production company in Berlin in 1917, the Egede-Nissen Film Compagnie GmbH. She managed its finances and artistic direction alongside her first husband, Georg Alexander. Her studio found immense commercial success by taking advantage of the German import ban on foreign films. Between 1917 and 1919 alone, her company produced at least 29 melodramas and detective serials, often starring Aud and her younger sisters, Ada and Gerd.