Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I pulled together some of the black & white photos from the trip into a little show.
I don’t have a particular ‘style’ of photography, but I do know that I’ll never be a ‘people’ photographer. When I run into interesting people, the camera sits forgotten as I chat, watch, listen.
In Bozeman I ran into a group of kids, modern day flower children, outside a gas station. They were playing music, dancing, trying to get enough money to buy gas to make their way home. One of the women, girl really, had long blond dreadlocks, gauzy skirt and tops, and with absolutely beautify tattoos over her stomach and over both arms. Intricate, traditionally colored tattoos with a strong Eastern accent.
If I were a ‘people’ photographer, I would have taken her picture and pictures of the others. But I didn’t. What I did do was sit with them for a while, hear their stories, listen to their not particularly good guitar playing, and give them a few bucks when I left. As I was driving away, one of the boys, mohawk haircut artfully colored, flashed me a huge smile and waved, and another of the girls ran up with a flower for me that she had plucked from the gas station flower bed. I left to the faint sounds of “Take care, sister!”—driving away with a smile that lasted at least 200 miles.
So, no pictures of dread locked tattooed blond innocence, or the looks on the faces of the people walking past, or the quiet giant in linen shirt and jeans who silently held out a can in one hand and an empty gas container in the other, or the boy singing folk songs as the others danced about.
I guess my photography will go in other directions. For now.
