The Lovely Road
(2001-2010)
The Lovely Road is a collection of Polaroid photographs documenting my exploration of the United States. Starting at twenty, I set out to experience the country as a newly independent adult and record my travels with the same Polaroid camera used by family to document my childhood.
Over a ten-year span, I amassed several thousand Polaroid photographs with a focus on the kitsch Americana of the highway, advertising, tourist traps, and other liminal spaces found in everyday life. Inspired by a collection of vintage postcards inherited from my grandparents.
I found the Polaroid photographs and their inherent grainy and saturated colors reminiscent of the imagery of the vintage postcards I inherited from my grandparents. What perfect way to capture the United States than through the instant satisfaction of a Polaroid. The photographs themselves immediately looked aged; the colors either saturated or washout out… an impression more than a true document. Making the photographs was as much about collection as documentation. I found comfort in the physical Polaroid photograph with its distinct design and shape. The physical collection of photographs informed how I approached framing my subjects, uniformly, with an emphasis on repetition.
Over time my impression of an idealized America depicted in the postcards that partially inspired the project began to shift. The more I travelled and the larger my collection grew, I began to notice the cracks of our society, often literally. The era of prosperity sold in part by the postcards and other ephemera I had absorbed was over by the time I set out on the road. I came to the conclusion that era never really existed and what I was capturing was not only the remnants of a bygone era, but rather a mirage of an ideal never quite realized. Mixed together in this collision of reflections, comedy, misdirects, and hard truths is a document of self and the never quite ending quest to find ones place in the landscape; a horizon that paradoxically stops just past your nose, yet stretches as far as the eye can see.
Portraits of me taken with the family Polaroid (1983, 2003).
The New Yorker
The road trip has inspired American photographers from Walker Evans to Lee Friedlander and Stephen Shore. Hammond, who lives in Ohio, joins their ranks with a show of unpretentious color Polaroids he took while driving cross-country between 2001 and 2010. Like Evans (who favored Polaroid film late in his career), Hammond pays attention to road signs, vernacular architecture, and detritus, but he’s most attuned to simple pleasures: a hand holding a snow cone, a body about to hit water, clouds lit by a sunset. [MORE]
AnOther Magazine
Scott Hammond, #88 Cuba, NM, 2005
A specialist in polaroid photography, Scott Hammond’s work is the spirit of holiday in 3 1/4 X 3 1/4”. A fan of the polaroid because of the imperfections of the process and the singularity of the results, Hammond has created a body of work that celebrates the incidental, saturated shot. [MORE]
L. Parker Stephenson PHOTOGRAPHS
SCOTT HAMMOND
THE LOVELY ROAD
Journeys Through the U.S.A.
#56 Denver, 2005 Leeta, Sarasota, FL, 2007 Columbus, OH, 2005
L. Parker Stephenson Photographs is pleased to present an exhibition of Scott Hammond's Polaroids. An Ohio based photographer, Hammond (b. 1981) took trips around the country, from 2001 -2010, making pictures with his grandparents' Polaroid 660 instant camera of things that caught his eye along the way. We invite you to an opening reception on Thursday, April 9th, 2015 from 6-8pm and to the Gallery's booth (#216) at AIPAD's Photography Show where his work will be featured to meet the artist on Saturday, April 28th.
In this digital age, Scott Hammond's work resonates with the prevalent urge for the quick snap, the selfie, proof that I Was Here. However, in contrast to the infinitely reproducable non tangible 1s and 0s of the digital file, the Polaroid (discontinued in 2008) offered a pocket sized unique artifact of a time and place. There is nothing particularly special about the subjects Hammond chooses, yet, out of an admitted compulsion to collect, along his trips to nowhere he gathers and accumulates bits of the rural and suburban American landscape; a small moment or sight he feels is worthy of being preserved. He calls it "idealizing the ordinary".
Present in the images are echoes of Walker Evans' obsession with signage and architecture, William Eggleston's use of color, Stephen Shore's choice of mundane scenes, as well as elements from other iconic American photographers' work. In Hammond's case, the Polaroid's saturated colors and grainy images coupled with his humorous, odd or totally banal subjects, pre-framed in a small square format, present a singular vision that is simultaneously retro and contemporary in flavor. [MORE]
Addendum
(2021-2022)
In 2021, several milestones converged: twenty years of traveling the country, the 20th anniversary of The Lovely Road project, and my 40th birthday. As a firm believer in signs, I felt a celebration was in order. With the pandemic easing and a milestone birthday approaching, I decided on a reflective solo road trip. Having traversed the country many times over two decades, I set out alone for the first time in years. Armed with a Polaroid after a decade, I spent two weeks on the road, often sleeping and eating in my car while staying in touch with a few people for safety. I also sent correspondence from significant places along the way. My route included a mix of must-see locations, revisiting past spots, and cultural touchstones where I hoped to gain clarity. New stops included the Gemini Giant in North Dakota, my last state in the lower 48, and the Grand Canyon. I revisited Odessa, Texas, nearly 20 years after my first visit to the World’s Largest Jack Rabbit, which I credit as the spark for the project. I also visited the George Floyd memorial, Standing Rock Reservation, and Manzanar, seeking grounding in a time of division. The resulting photos offer a somewhat more cynical counterpoint to the curious imagery of the earlier work.
The Odessa Jack Rabbit, Odessa, Texas (2001, 2021).
