If Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady went on the road again, they would have a hard time topping the adventures of photographers Ross McDermott and Andrew Owen.
Thirteen months ago McDermott left his home in Charlottesville, Va., in a truck powered by vegetable oil pulling a silver 1960s trailer. His goal: explore American subculture by photographing “small, hidden and bizarre” festivals.
“We were looking at American culture through the back door,” Andrew Owen, a photographer and Georgetown University alum, said. “Each festival was like seeing new documents and new information about our culture.”
Together, McDermott and Owen drove 40,000 miles, stopping at festivals in every region of America. In Louisiana, they saw the Saint Joseph's Day Indians Mardi Gras celebration. In Wisconsin, they went backstage to photograph the Xtreme Spirit Dance and Cheer Regional Competition. In South Carolina, they were at a powwow taking portraits of traditional tribal costumes. In Alaska, they documented all kinds of facial hair at the World Beard and Mustache Competition.
“These festivals revealed how multifaceted and multiethnic we can be,” Owen said. “When you get off the main highways and into people’s lives you really see how interconnected we all are.”
With a background in industrial design, McDermott got the project idea after spending a year in Japan studying the culture and photographing what he saw.
“Often examining culture meant visiting traditional Japanese festivals,” McDermott said. “This caused me to question if festivals in the U.S. had the same cultural significance.”
Planning the trip
Funded partly by a grant from National Geographic, the photographers set out to visit festivals in almost every state. Before leaving, McDermott researched many “less known” festivals. But not everything was planned.
“We heard about a lot of these festivals through word of mouth,” Owen said. “Some of it was random, some of it luck…often a couple days before we didn’t know where we were going.” This made for a grueling driving schedule and little sleep.
“Once, we drove from New Orleans to Wisconsin in one night,” McDermott said. “We slept whenever we could, but it wasn’t unusual to spend 20 hours straight driving. It was an amazing adventure, but it wasn’t always glamorous.”
Using vegetable oil as fuel made getting around difficult.
“We got into some pretty smelly places to get vegetable oil,” McDermott said. “Finding it was also at times unbelievably stressful. In some small towns, we would spend hours searching for fuel.” They sold the truck with 30,000 miles traveled and three months left in their journey.
“We started with the ideal of the great American road trip but we had to adjust,” McDermott said. “Freeing ourselves from veggie oil totally changed the spirit of the project. It let us focus more on shooting and editing.”
Finding America’s warm spirit
Sometimes getting there was only half the battle.
“To get access to events we really had to work with each situation,” McDermott said. “We drove 10 hours to visit the Breyer festival in Kentucky for model horse collectors only to get rejected at the door… the president and public relations representative said they wanted nothing to do with us.” Despite setbacks, McDermott and Owen said most people they met were welcoming.
“It was really amazing to just walk into these people’s lives, lives of total strangers,” McDermott said. “People showed us that great warm spirit of America, they really opened their doors to us.”
They used CouchSurfing to find places to stay, a global hospitality network of individuals who agree to host other members for free.
“We absolutely couldn’t have done this trip without outside support, which was often from strangers,” Owen said. Friends and family also closely followed their progress.
“I could check the website so I knew they were doing well,” Owen’s mother, Lisa McRae said. “Sometimes I did worry, especially seeing Andrew holding a hook and one of those rattle snakes. But I think their project really opened my eyes, and others’ eyes to all of these small town traditions. Usually, people just tend to pay attention to headlines and national news.”
Continuing the Journey
Since finishing their trip in October, McDermott and Owen have presented their project at National Geographic’s Headquarters and Georgetown University. Last week, they participated in gallery exhibition for FotoWeek DC.
They are thinking about ways to continue the project. At the Georgetown University presentation, McDermott said they planned to turn in another list of festivals to National Geographic next week.
“There are some we missed because we were short on time,” he said. “Also, now that we have the experience, we’d love to take the project international.” To see photos and videos from the 40 festivals they documented, go to www.americanfestivalsproject.net. Their next show is Jan. 9 at The Bridge-Progressive Arts Initiative in Charlottesville, Va.
You can reach this writer at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
