Hurry Up and Wait
Photographers-turned-truckers peek into America’s trucking subculture
In summer 2008, at the height of the U.S. financial crisis, husband-and-wife photographers James Tribble and Tracey Mancenido packed up their NYC apartment and hit the road to document one of the more obscure necessities of American consumerism first-hand. Armed with little more than a commercial license, tips from Tribble’s truck driver dad and a few large-format cameras, the dynamic artists embarked on their new career as truckers. The resulting body of work, a series of tenderly contemplative portraits and still-lifes, opens 9 September 2010 at NYC’s Sasha Wolf Gallery, revealing a rarely-seen side of the greasy culture responsible for supplying the country with everything from scrap metal to Toy Story 3 dolls.
Inspired by the contrasting loneliness of their experience, Mancenido and Tribble’s stark images depict subjects removed from their familiar contexts and (more often than not) plopped right in the center of the frame. In one a mechanic sits cross-legged in a vast gravel lot, while another shows a hulking white pillar in one of the caves where they delivered shipments.
To learn more, their blog on the project is full of updates and insights they posted while on the road. For those in NYC, see the haunting pictures in person at the Sasha Wolf gallery before the show closes 23 October 2010. For a limited sneak peek, check out the gallery.
