10 years ago, I was finishing up a photo project that would turn into the book pictured here. The car camping world was a different beast. The first two publishers I presented the idea of doing a photobook on vans passed on the idea without giving it a second look. There wasn't a billion dollar industry building, and outfitting vehicles and there certainly weren't people making a living creating content around the activity. There were, however, thousands of people living and traveling in their vehicles simply to do it and during the span of summer of 2011 to fall of 2013, I would pull a U-turn and photograph any interesting vehicle I saw. I took the photos mostly on a Mamiya 7 that I bought used at a camera store in Portland and eventually passed on to
@jamesbarkman . After getting rejected by traditional publishers, I decided to reach out to
@victoryjournal about making the book on my own terms and fund it with a
@Kickstarter . In the Fall of 2013, I flew to New York with a harddrive full of scans and worked on the design of and layout at their Brooklyn Office. Friends of mine roll their eyes when I say this quote, but T.S. Elliot once captured the process of coming up with an idea and then executing it when he said, "Between the Idea and the Reality, Falls the Shadow." He was probably referring to something far more important and beautiful than making a photobook about people living in their vehicles, but out of all of the projects that I've done, the shadow of Home Is Where You Park It is the smallest. When I meet a person and partake in the proverbial dogs sniffing each other's ass that involves showing prior work, the first thing I reach for is Home Is Where You Park It. Today, I make a living filmmaking and don't put much energy into photo books. My self published books aren't for sale and I have any plans to print anymore. Every now and then I'll get a message with a link to a copy of Home Is Where You Park It on Amazon or Ebay for a price that you could buy a shitty car for and scratch my head in disbelief. I have a few hundred copies of the book stashed away for a rainy day and just put them on my webstore, Link in BIO.
