KIM REIERSON - EIGHTEE

“EIGHTEEN” is Reierson’s visual documentation of, and homage to, one of America’s most often ignored yet vitally important subcultures: the trucker, the men and women who crisscross the country piloting their big eighteen wheeler rigs across vast, open landscapes, under the big blue skies of the USA.

For five years Reierson photographed these American heroes. She hung out at truck stops, traveled the highways with them, waking up in 20 different states. The resulting large-format images such as Chrome Hearts, an in-your-face, closely-cropped shot of the elaborate metal-encrusted front cab bodywork and tire rims of an neon- and moon-lit semi proudly on display in a busy truck stop parking lot, And Tigers, Bells, and Whistles, a view of the interior cab of a tricked-out rig, rendered in all of its intricate glory, recall the work of the photo-realist painters Richard Estes and John Salt in their focus on vivid color and their heightened sense of reality. Others such as Truck Tub Truck Wash (the invitational piece), wherein two workers hose down a massive rig, their bodies dwarfed by its immensity, and Have a Nice Day, a candid portrait of affable Trucker Tim Young proudly posing in his homey truck cabin, are poetic depictions of a community and culture in flux.