Kate Medley is a photojournalist living in Durham, North Carolina. Her new book, Thank You Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed & Fuel the American South, explores the complexities of the independent gas stations throughout the American South. The project took her 10 years and covers 11 states.

"In the book’s introduction, Medley writes, 'Our politics may be polarized, our economics stratified, our neighborhoods segregated, and our rhetoric strained, but still nearly everyone regularly passes through these same commercial spaces. We fill up the tank. We relieve our bladders. We grab a cold one on the way home from work. We take advantage of Friday night’s ‘prime rib special.’  We may rub elbows as we pass the ketchup. In an increasingly atomized world of mediated interactions, we have fewer and fewer communal spaces that unite us.'"

"...Far from the monolithic spaces of corporate capitalism, gas stations are as complex as the country itself. The National Association of Convenience Stores reports that there are 147,000 gas stations in the US. Of those, 127,888 are convenience stores that also sell gas. And 60 percent are owned and run by an individual family. In rural areas where it’s hard to get to a grocery store, gas stations become both restaurant and supermarket. In a country of vast spaces stitched together by streams of concrete, gas stations are indispensable places of culture, communion, and creativity." - Lyz Lenz

Article: What a Gas Station Really Means