Hitch Hike: Massachusetts

1997 - What began as a poor art student's way to visit high school friends became an obsession. Most weekends, I would craft a cardboard sign and hit the highway. I hitchhiked primarily from Boston to Western Massachusetts, but eventually ranged as far west as Albany and as far east as Provincetown. Starting the ride from an on-ramp at Alewife—the final stop on the T—I never knew where it would end. The people who picked me up, the long, lonely walks, and the open road became my subjects. I then created silver gelatin prints in the darkroom using a messy, manual technique—staining and painting the developer directly onto the paper—and I wrote my stories all over the finished images. I then mounted the prints back onto the very same cardboard signs I had held, thumb out, on the side of the road. Now, decades later, they are yellowed and battered, still carrying the faint, stale scent of 90s studio parties and cigarettes.