REST STOP, USA — Kent Meister Photography

Rest Stop, USA is an in-progress series of large format color portraits made at rest areas along American highways. Rest areas are democratic locations, everyone on a long road trip needs to stop at one eventually. These studied, formal portraits of the people I would meet along the way became mile markers of my progression down the road; chance encounters finding both myself and my subjects in a kind of neutral ground between our homes, our comforts, perhaps even our ideologies. This setting allowed a natural vulnerability to occur in the moment, pushed further by conversation and the presence of a large Speed Graphic camera, a disarming and unfamiliar sight to most people. This project, as much as it is an American road document, is also about the act of slowing down and engaging with each other, free of judgement and open to one another’s humanity. We’re all on the same long trip after all.