Motivated by the road trip her mother, she and sisters made across America The London-based photographer is determined to alter the standard trucker’s picture.
In the American popular imagination the subculture of truckers has an image that is clear: older, moustachioed males typically dressed in double denim, and enthusiastically talking about their fancy up trucks. However, this stereotype does not take into account one part of the traveling workforce completely it’s women. It was this largely unnoticed segment of one of America’s most stereotyped work environments that the photographer Anne-Marie Michel became set about to document.
Sisters of the Road is her first project for herself, which started as she was looking for an entirely new perspective on her work. “I worked as an actress and fashion photographer who was unhappy,” she details, “and I was determined to create photographs that said to me.” Anne-Marie thus took inspiration from the journey that she had taken with her mom and sisters across America. “That was a time in my life that had an immense impact on me and the way I think about life” Anne-Marie explains. “I was impressed by the courage and strength that my mother showed. She was constantly moving to come up with solutions and to keep us all on the right track.”
It was these traits of resilience to find solutions and the capacity to (quite literally) keep moving that she observed in trucker women and in the women she wished to promote. “The conventional style of aspirational femininity we see in media and fashion is one of elegant, static woman,” Anne-Marie muses. “These female truckers are just the complete opposite of that, determined, independent, and constantly moving.” In the end in the end, Anne-Marie hopes the series will be seen as an “redirection to aspirational female femininity”.
The photos of Sisters of the Road depict truckers in a variety of locations and spaces that are part of their day-to-day routine such as in the cabin of their truck and eating meals at the roadside eatery or just out in the vast expanses of the American plane, which is dotted with cactus. With each photo in the series, Anne Marie provides a brief excerpt from interviews, with some of which explain how they ended up being a trucker, and they share their stories of the journey.
In her article, she outlines some of the photographs that are currently the most appealing to her, Anne-Marie comes to her photo of Idella Hansen. Anne-Marie describes Idella who was a trucker for fifty years, as an “fascinating” female to shoot. “She appeared to go between a tough, intimidating woman, and a soft grandmotherly look,” the photographer says. In the photograph she is positioned in the middle of the harsh vegetation, with her hands tucked into her pockets, and exudes the confidence of a woman and an ease.
In addition, she sees that the work as something made available to everyone. In the past, Idella stayed with the photographer in London and was a part of the launch of the new publication on The Photographers Gallery, and the truckers communicated via a Facebook group that shared updates and hyperlinks. “The project isn’t only mine, it’s also theirs.”
