Alive & Unedited

Instant attractions

By Todd LaPlace

WILL SHILLING PHOTO

Ask him to tell you about his favorite Polaroid and photographer Scott Hammond can wax poetic about a shot of a blank billboard in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, that paints it as a tragic casualty in backroad America. The photo, shot in 2004, is just one entry on Hammond's ever-growing website, The Lovely Road, a catalog of his frequent trips across America.

His journey, though, may be nearing a roadblock — Polaroid announced earlier this year that it will cease production of its instant film. The decision isn't slowing Hammond as he prepares another road trip, this time around the South, to capture more little-seen roadside Americana.

How'd you get started in Polaroids?

I first got started as a freshman in college. I did this project where I just photographed a day in my life. Every 20 minutes, a little timer went off on my watch and I'd take a Polaroid, no matter what I was looking at — a door, a person, anything. Just a photo every 20 minutes, and at the end of the day, I had, like, 100 photos.

That summer after school let out, I worked at night, so I was looking for something to do during the day. I kinda just drove around with a Polaroid camera and took pictures of signs, and that was that.

WILL SHILLING PHOTO

What makes you choose something as a subject?

It's weird, but I just know. It just kinda feels right. I'm sure a lot of photographers are this way, especially if you're a documentary photographer or street photographer, but when you just look around, you're actually drawing little boxes around things.

I like a lot of signs and ratty things — things that stand alone out in the middle of a space, like a desolate area and there's just one little thing there. I like to photograph things like that.

How did the road trips get started?

That first year, when I started taking Polaroids, I went with my dad, my stepmom and my brother to Odessa, Texas, to watch a state track meet that my brother was in. When I was out there, we went to what I guess would be my first roadside attraction, the Odessa Meteor Crater.

It's just a big hole out in the middle of nowhere and no one's even sure if a meteor fell there, but because the hole's so unusual, probably a meteor fell there. That would probably describe my favorite kind of roadside attraction. Something that may or may not have happened and is pretty minimal, but someone has tried to capitalize on it as much as possible.

That really stuck with me, and right outside there, I took a picture of a pump jack pumping oil out in the middle of nowhere —just going about its business. How many people see that pump jack? And is there even an image of it besides mine out there? Who would even think to take a photo of that? It was just existing out there, so I took a photo of it and that's what started me thinking about it.

What's the future of your site now that Polaroid plans to stop making your film?

I was hoping this project would be something I could do for years and years and years, and the ultimate goal was to cover at least the continental states and have a comprehensive image of backroad America. I guess the reason Polaroid is so important to this project is that the film is so fallible and imperfect, and the things that I'm interested in shooting are imperfect and fallible. The most perfect mode to record these things is an imperfect snapshot.

I couldn't conceive of doing this project any other way than with Polaroid film, so I've got another year left of buying the film before I have to start stockpiling it. I mean, I'm gonna keep shooting until I feel that I'm finished, and hopefully I'll be able to do that before the film goes away.

July 10, 2008

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