Four years ago, as I was planning a pilgrimage to Marfa, Texas, a Stephen Shore exhibit was making its way around the country. One of the most arresting images in the show was this photograph, simply titled, Presidio, Texas, February 21, 1975. I thought it would be fun to find where Shore had taken the photograph and to chronicle how the place had changed — especially the American-Mexican borderland in the photograph. I used Google Maps and some civic records to pinpoint what I thought was the location and planned my drive. I thought it might be an interesting example in what art reveals about us then and us now: If that’s the U.S.-Mexico border on the left of the photograph, I was pretty darn sure it wasn’t a cyclone fence anymore. I spent a day or two convincing the Los Angeles Times to let me write about it, and I was off. Alas, I never got there.

So thanks to a tip from Hyperallergic, I’ve been enjoying reading about Jeremiah Moss’ posts about Edward Hopper’s famed 1942 painting Nighthawks, which now resides at the Art Institute of Chicago. The site of the painting has long been believed to be a diner at a specific Greenwich Village intersection, a theory backed by Hopper biographer Gail Levin. Moss wasn’t convinced, so he investigated. He’s written up his journey in four wonderful posts: Part one, part two, part three and a coda. Don’t miss ‘em. (And what other paintings/pictures should we go ‘find?’)