A 12 year photographic study of the American roadside

Over the course of 12 years, I drove hundreds of thousands of miles across the United States photographing places most people pass without seeing. Empty intersections. Motels, storefronts, quiet landscapes, and stretches of road that exist somewhere between use and abandonment.

These are not landmarks or destinations. They’re the edges of towns, the spaces between cities, the places that rarely hold attention for more than a few seconds through a windshield. But over time, those moments began to accumulate — revealing a quieter, more honest portrait of the country.

There’s a rhythm to the roadside. Repetition, subtle variation, long stretches of sameness interrupted by something unexpected. Light shifts, buildings fade, signs weather and disappear. What remains is a landscape in constant transition, shaped as much by absence as by presence.

This work is not about the destination. It’s about everything in between.

← Back to American Road Trip Photography Book

Roadside Meditations (signed)

American Road Trip Photography Book - Open Road - Travel - Fine Art Photography Collector - Publishing - USA

Road trip photograph of an old motel in a small American Town

Fine art photograph of a motel in Bishop, California with the snow covered Sierra Nevada Mountains in the background

Fine art photograph of Mono Lake at sunset in California

Roadside Meditations (signed)

$60.00

Quantity:

Add To Cart

What This Book Is

Published by Kehrer Verlag, Roadside Meditations is a long-term body of work rooted in observation and patience.

There is no spectacle here. No landmarks. No attempt to dramatize the landscape.

Instead, the photographs hold on quiet moments — places that feel familiar but are rarely given attention. The kind of scenes that reveal themselves slowly, often after you’ve already passed them.

Why It Matters

The American roadside is constantly changing. Buildings disappear. Signs fade. Entire towns shift or vanish.

What remains is a fragmented visual record of how the country actually looks — not the version built for postcards, but the one encountered in motion, day after day.

This book is a record of that experience.

Limited Availability

Signed copies from the first print run are available in limited numbers.

Once these are gone, there are no guarantees of a second printing.

Who This Is For

Collectors of contemporary photography
Interior designers looking for quiet, neutral work rooted in place
Anyone drawn to the overlooked edges of American life

Roadside Meditations is a subtle reflection on the natural and sometimes mundane beauty of this vast country. Like his famous predecessors in road trip photography, Hammer’s images speak about the freedom to be on the road, about the educational, transformative and meditative character of the time spent traveling.

Hammer’s intuitive and nuanced photographs can be read as metaphors for the human psyche. At the same time, they are candidly capturing the passing of time reflected in the manmade structures within the landscape. Like a road trip, the sequence of images lines up to become a road itself, on which the viewer’s eye travels and experiences the inimitable American landscape both in its timelessness and bearing the signs of the 21st century.

Hardcover 12in. x 9.75in.

128 pages

68 color photographs

ISBN 978-3-96900-070-02023

Editor:

Alexa Becker

Text:

Nick Yetto

Design:

Sweeper Design (Nick Antonich)