The Great American Bus Trip

Photographer Paul Herzoff has 56 prints in the Smithsonian online archives from 1970 – 1973 and I came upon this stash from Sheila Newbury’s blog. These beautiful photographs feature old housetrucks (trucks and buses made into living spaces), craftsmen and the families who dwell within, mostly in California.

Sheila writes:

Herzoff frequently trains his camera on the vehicles themselves, as if they were a collection of large, patient carnival creatures, waiting on their masters’ whim for the next phase of the journey to begin.

There’s a poignancy to these portraits now, over thirty years later: they’re affectionate toward their subjects (not a note much sounded in contemporary photography), admiring of the ingenuity required to live a life of adaptive independence, yet clear-eyed about its fragility.