For some, a cross-country trip means a chance to get a sense of life beyond the highways and byways. However, in his most recent book, “Roadshow Anthropology,” photographer Mark Chester has taken a very different perspective. He finds inspiration without ever leaving the road, just observing the interesting, humorous, and quirky things — simply by observing life through the windshield of his car.
“Driving a car is like taking photographs in your head,” says Chester. “You’re always aware of what’s around you.”
To facilitate this particular series of “shots on the fly,” Chester used various point-and-shoot cameras, including the Canon PowerShot. “The PowerShot is easy to hold in one hand,” he explains in the forward to the book. “I can just point and shoot at the subject, never having to look at the camera’s screen. At all times I was literally focused on the road while holding the camera and clicking the shutter at the decisive moment. Driving is an adventure,” says Chester. “You never know what might be unfolding.”
The book includes black-and-white photos of interesting buildings and bridges, along with images that have merit just for their aesthetic appeal: a gorgeous cloud-filled sky as backdrop for a line of long-haul trucks; a striking bare-limbed tree as seen from the driver’s-side window. But the majority of the book is dedicated to humorous or head-scratching signs on billboards, buildings, or the sides of trucks. One shot of a sign for a chiropractor reads “Walk-ins welcome. Crawl-ins preferred.” Another hand-drawn sign offers: “Divorce Sale: He’s gone, Now RV must go.”
Adding to the humor of what Chester calls “a storybook as opposed to an art book,” the photographer paired images on facing pages to make for witty juxtapositions. A “Duck Crossing” sign is seen opposite an image of an improbable duck-shaped building. An image of a man on a mobility scooter holding his pitbull in his lap faces a page with a business called “LaudroMutt — A self-service dog wash.”
This isn’t the first project where Chester chose an unusual — and very specific — subject. Among his five books are titles such as “No in America” devoted exclusively to deterrent signs with the word “no” in them; and “Twosomes,” which, according to the book’s Amazon listing, features “images culled from his [Chester’s] 40 years of traveling with a camera, presented in pairings related by subject matter, graphic interest or, as the photographer puts it, ‘a stretch of the imagination.’”
However, Chester doesn’t focus solely on the quirky in his published work. Previously he traveled with Charles Kuralt, documenting scenes from across the American landscape for the journalist’s book “Dateline America,” and, more recently, Chester was commissioned by the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition to capture images of immigrants for a book titled “The Bay State: A Multicultural Landscape, Photographs of New Americans.”
Chester is a self-taught photographer with an impressive résumé. His work has been published in newspapers nationwide, including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and Christian Science Monitor. The Woods Hole–based photographer’s work is in the permanent collections of museums and universities across the country.
A selection of images from “Roadshow Anthropology” will be on exhibit at the Cape Cod Museum in the summer of 2025, along with images from the photographer’s previous books. While Chester may be attracted to the micro-view of life (as clearly evidenced by his upcoming release, “Loo-Loos: Restroom Gender Signs”) he sees himself, like many fellow photographers, as an anthropologist of sorts. “A photographer is an observer of mankind,” he says. “We’re making a study of what makes us human.”
On the Island, Mark Chester’s “Roadshow Anthropology” is available at Edgartown Books. There are also copies of both his most recent book and “The Bay State: A Multicultural Landscape” at both the Edgartown and West Tisbury libraries.
