American Road Trip Photography Book
Photo Book - The Open Road
For the past 13 years, I’ve been photographing the quieter edges of America—small towns, roadside motels, empty streets, and the kinds of places most people pass without stopping.
What began as a road trip became a long-term body of work built over hundreds of thousands of miles on the road.
That work is now collected in the book Roadside Meditations.
Roadside Meditations — A Photographic Record of the American Road
This fine art photography book brings together photographs made across the United States, focusing on places that exist just outside of attention.
There’s no single destination or narrative arc. The work moves through the country the same way the photographs were made—slowly, without urgency, and often without a clear endpoint.
The images reflect towns that feel paused in time, buildings that have outlived their purpose, roadside spaces shaped more by use than design, and landscapes that hold a quiet, persistent stillness
This is not a document of landmarks, but of presence—of what remains when nothing is trying to be seen.
An American Landscape Between Moments
The photographs sit within a tradition of American color work that looks beyond spectacle and into the everyday.
Gas stations, motel rooms, desert edges, storefronts, parking lots—places that are often overlooked, but deeply characteristic of the American landscape.
The interest is in the in-between: The space before something happens. The trace of something that already has. The feeling that time moves differently in certain places
Many of these scenes resist being tied to a specific moment. They exist somewhere outside of it.
The Book
Last week on the drive home from Wyoming I listened to a great podcast with Rick Ruben and Rich Roll. Rick is such a unique and inspiring individual with an immense amount of knowledge from a lifetime of varying experiences. Of the many nuggets he dropped on the show, this one stuck out the most - “The audience comes last, in service to the audience. The audience wants the best thing. They don’t get the best thing when you’re trying to service them. They get the best thing when you’re servicing yourself. When you’re true to who you are”.
That’s an invaluable statement for any creator to hear and it sums up exactly how I feel about photography, for personal projects as well as commercial work. Very rarely do you see commercial work that has any great effect on people or the world of photography, because it’s watered down generic imagery that’s sole purpose is to sell a product and feature the companies logo as many times as possible. Nobody wants to take a risk. They want to play it safe and not ruffle any feathers. Seldom does an ad campaign come out with historical significance or staying power. They are about now! How much can we sell now!!?? So what does this have to do with a photography book? Everything. If I or any other photographer set out to make a book strictly with the audience in mind, it would suck. The intention would be glaringly obvious and the images would reflect a direct lack of caring. The title of the book might as well be Money Grab.
Roadside Meditations is a niche subject that’s not for everyone, which you could argue is the case for any fine art book. If it were for everyone, it wouldn’t be worth a damn. To further Ruben’s above quote, I’d like to share how my latest photo book came to be. A few years back I began collaborating with (now) photo editor/consultant Alexa Becker (Germany). At the time she was working for Kehrer Verlag and I was trying to pitch her one (maybe three?) different book ideas, none of which landed. Her interest in my work seemed genuine though, so I kept in touch. And at one point I reached out asking simply for a consultation on my “America” series. After a half dozen back and forths through Zoom, she pulled a few outlying images from my edit and asked if I had anything else that might go along with it. I did, so she began assembling a side edit. A while later she had the beginnings of Roadside Meditations, and told me to forget all about the America series, because “this” was the book! Turns out she was right, and all the roadside images I made thinking they were just accents to the bigger series, was IT all along. The point is that I never had anything in mind for the photos. I wasn’t making them for anyone but myself, and maybe one or two of them might find their way into a book, print, whatever?? Well, here we are a year and a half later, and a large shipment of books is scheduled to arrive from Germany in less than a half hour. So much has happened since then. I’ve continued shooting images that would fit into a Roadside Meditations Vol. 2, but that’s not the intention. The images are only made because I’m drawn to make them. And it would be a bonus if another book happened to develop. Vol.1 isn’t out in the world yet, so there is nothing to say people even want it, but I’m still a firm believer that “the audience comes last, in service of the audience.”
Collecting the Work
Photographs from Roadside Meditations are available as fine art prints.
Each print is produced using museum-grade materials and intended for long-term display in private collections, interior spaces, and galleries. If you’re interested in prints, please contact me directly - rob@robhammerphotography.com
Purchase the Book
Click here to purchase a copy of Roadside Meditations
