Think of American truckers, and you immediately conjure cinematic images of shiny 18-wheeler rigs, and the macho bravado of Smokey & The Bandits. Or worse, the kind of predatory behaviour, played out in Thelma & Louise, that have gotten truckers a bad name.

Hurry Up and Wait, by photography US-based duo James Tribble and Tracey Mancenido, aims to address some of these misconceptions, illustrating truckers “as the modern day heroes of our economy”, shot over the course of a year during which the married couple hit the road themselves, covering more than 100,000 miles delivering loads across the States.

Simon Bainbridge interviewed the pair about their partnership and their experiences shooting their American road odyssey.

S.B. Can you tell me a little bit about the background to your ongoing collaboration, and how that works?

T&M: We have been working collaboratively since 2006, and met while we were both studying, working at the same restaurant in the trendy Meatpacking district in NYC. We find our work revolving around recurring ideas of human connection and solitude. 

Our first body of work together, called Pillow Talk, began as a result of our own intimate relationship.  It started out as a conversation about intimacy in which we began to answer and understand by photographing other couples.  We wanted these portraits to provoke a sense of familiarity and inherent desire for human connection. (This work was subsequently featured in The New York Times.)

Our process is slow as we shoot in tandem, simultaneously using both medium and large format film cameras on tripods.  We like to use the duality of this process to our advantage, using our movement and discourse to capture an image the way we see it, specifically for our portraits.  During our time on the road, we found ourselves only using one large format camera for our still life’s and landscapes.
 
S.B. Briefly describe what you’ve worked on together (including any commercial or editorial work, ie not personal projects, if any) before Hurry Up and Wait.
 
T&M: We continue to explore and accept editorial assignments, having worked with such publications as Trace, Good, Code, Re-up, Very, and City Magazines.  We have been contributing photographers to Code magazine, based out of Amsterdam, for over three years now, collaborating on stories focusing on different subcultures within the states. Our most recent stories include the Red Wing Shoe factory in Red Wing, MN, one of the few and lasting factories we have left, and a portrait study of the new generation of young farmers who have chosen to dedicate their lives to a food movement over wearing a suit and tie.

S.B. What was the genesis of the idea for Hurry Up and Wait?
 
T&M: The trucking culture is one full of many misconceptions, and we set out to make a body of work that would illuminate truckers as the modern day heroes of our economy.  Our intrigue stemmed from wanting to of know who really is the backbone of our economy and what sort of stamina it takes to be the actual driving force behind our consuming culture. 

In 2007 we spent a summer driving with James’ father, an owner-operating truck driver from South Carolina.  We spent that time photographing him and his friends, hoping to understand their way of life and love for the open road.  What we learned is we could never understand what they endure, so we decided to become the subjects ourselves.  At the height of one of the worst financial crises in American history, we went to truck-driving school and got our Commercial Driver’s License.

S.B. It seems like a crazy idea, to commit to a year driving trucks across America, especially at the start of a recession. How did you prepare (in terms of training), and how easy was it to pick up work? On another hand, it’s a brilliant solution to self-funding a project. Did it work out that way? Did it pay your way for the year?
 
T&M:It couldn’t have been at a more inopportune time, and we have planned this project for almost a year before we even stepped foot into our own rig.  Getting rid of our apartment, we packed up and trained for two weeks at a truck driving school, and found work very shortly after for one of the largest hauling companies here in the states. 

The recession was at its peak when we began, and while we hoped to at least break even it didn’t work out that way regardless of our minimal cost of living.  Loads were scarce, fuel was at a record high, and being new drivers you were least priority to a large-scale company.  There were many new drivers, also new to the culture, from recent unemployment, and there were more drivers on the road than there were loads to be had.

S.B. Did you have a tight idea of what you wanted to capture, or did it evolve along the way? And conceptually, did that come together in the edit, or did you always want to express the essential isolation of the trucker, and the ephemera of their world? It’s not so much a portrait of a subculture – it’s a more personal, poetic study. What do you hope to get across?

T&M: It took us months before we knew what we wanted to photograph, and during that time we hardly made any photos.  Instead of entertaining stereotypical notions about truck driving, we wanted this to be an intimate and personal meditation of an industry, and way of life, that most people know very little about. 

We became the job, performing the day to day we became less and less interested in the façade.  We wanted to see what held this culture together and pointed our cameras to that – the components that comprise the whole, a semblance to the world we entered, and chose to highlight the isolation and vastness of the open road, and hours on end alone.
 
Shooting large format, you’ve captured the scenes you encountered as monumental spaces. Did you ever get frustrated that you couldn’t capture more instantaneous moments – or were you always clear that wasn’t the plan?
 
Scale was very important for us. We played off the enormity of an eighteen-wheeler, our new mobile home, and how small everything seemed in comparison. We carefully chose how we made our images, the way we lit and how our images were framed. A lot of our images were photographed at night, the integral time of day we weren’t busy and were finished driving.

S.B. How did you shoot people? Did you stage scenes, or ask them to hold moments, or simply shoot what you saw?

T&M: Most drivers are extremely autonomous and kept to themselves.  You’re literally in and out of your truck, it’s a quiet and lonely occupation and we chose to focus on that.  We searched for open areas in and around truck stops and distribution centers to make our portraits, purposely with almost no descriptive background of who they are, what they do, or even a sense of location to emphasize that we were constantly in a different place from day to day and wanted to reflect that anonymity. 

While making portraits we generally shoot together (time permitting), dancing around our subjects with our cameras on tripods.  It’s our time to get to know who they are, giving very little direction and allowing them the opportunity to react naturally to us.

S.B. There’s such a long and strong tradition of taking to the road in American photography. What were your influences (in terms of photogs, writers, or more general ideas about the American Dream)? Did these inform you, or were you conscious of this tradition weighing you down if you got lost in it?
 
T&M: The influences are countless with of course Robert Frank, Joel Sternfeld and Stephen Shore as paramount examples.  All three of those photographers captured their journey across America and we sought to conceptually highlight the experience of ours as truck drivers. 

S.B. You’re exhibiting it in NYC now (at Sasha Wolf Gallery until 23 October). How difficult is to edit down to just a short selection of images? How many did you take? Do you have plans to show it in any other way, such as an extended book? Do you have additional material, such as diary entries or anything like that, which you would use?

T&M: Editing was an extremely difficult part of the work.  Being on the road for so long, we hardly had time to develop film and look at contacts.  Coming back, after having taken countless images, we turned to a few close friends and mentors.  Being so close to the work, we appreciated the feelings invoked from a fresh set of eyes. 

The edit for the show was very tight, and we carefully chose images that work well with one another and still convey the harsh beauty that exists within this culture.  We feel the images would live well as a monograph, and hope to publish this work in the next few years.  During our time on the road, we kept several journals, and have countless audio recordings from interviews to cb conversations.
 
S.B. Can you tell me about your experiences on the road, how you integrated and got on with truckers, how it was driving this beast, any stories that you tell about encounters on the road…
 
T&M: At first it was pure culture shock that faded away as we assimilated quickly.  Any preconceived notions we had changed by our sharing the same load-carrying burden of making on-time deliveries.  Usually faced with apprehension from other drivers, there was a very interesting dynamic being a young multiethnic couple in a male dominated culture.  Our interest was followed by their intrigue of whom we were and how we ended up there, making it easier to begin conversation that helped form relationships.

Initially, driving was very hard, just getting used to the size of your truck and constantly knowing who and what was around you was a feat in itself, in addition for driving countless hours on end.  We drove well over one hundred thousand miles and spent thousands of hours delivering loads. 

Driving wasn’t as difficult as backing-up.  There are a handful of lopsided poles and lampposts out there with our name on it from our first few weeks out.  When you back-up into a spot for the night at a truck stop, all eyes are on you.  Every parked driver is in front of his cab, watching how well you can get into a spot.  At a truck stop, your windshield also serves as your tube, you can stare out of it for hours watching trucks pull in and out and seeing who gets out of them. 

Most new drivers have stage fright and get so frustrated they just ended up driving away.  It’s a true skill parking an eighteen-wheeler.  When you see someone pull into a spot in one shot, you hear everyone on the cb saying how smooth it was.     

We witnessed firsthand the effects of our current economy, driving through states ubiquitously part of the ‘Rust Belt’ such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, parts of Wisconsin, Illinois and New York.  Barren car manufacturing parking lots complemented the open highways to which they were adjacent.  We numerously sat for days waiting for loads in Ohio, pleading with our dispatcher to find us loads heading south as there were more loads moving down there.

We’ve hauled many interesting loads from chemical fertilizer for Monsanto in which we had to wear protective eyewear and a hard-hat just to enter the facility.  Also, we each had to take a test regarding their safety procedures. 

Once we were loaded with Sony products and were required to inform dispatch each time we stopped, where we fueled, and where we parked for the night.  After picking up high-value loads such as those, you cannot stop for 200 miles to ensure safety of the product.  We were in awe of how often we were at a Walmart DC (distribution center), and how much product they move. 

We once did a load for FEMA carrying bottled water as part of their relief effort when Hurricane Ike hit.  This time they were more than prepared, having learned from Hurricane Katrina.  There were acres and acres of parking lots at Reliant Stadium in San Antonio, TX full of eighteen-wheelers, each carrying either water, medical supplies, cots, ice or MRE’s (meals ready to eat) usually eaten by the army.  That was one of our most memorable experiences as drivers.

S.B. What’s next?

T&M: There are several ideas we are working on, approaching the subject matter in a similar manner. We’re currently in the research and development part before we actually begin making new work.