(CNN) — On a sunny October day in Woolwich, Maine, photographer Sarah Silbiger is shouting directions at her partner Jason Bernert from the back of their van.
Foward. Backward. Forward. Backward.
The 23-foot Winnebago EKKO moves awkwardly, changing direction every few seconds as Bernert carefully maneuvers it into position. It’s leaf peeper season in New England and the small restaurant parking lot is filled with tourists seeking a bite to eat. The bustle makes the repositioning more difficult.
Finally, after asking Bernert to “readjust the van a million times,” Silbiger said, she has what she’s looking for. Framed up perfectly outside of van’s back window is the 12-foot tall, 700-pound inflatable lobster that sits atop Taste of Maine Restaurant about 35 miles up the coast from Portland.
“What’s more Americana than oversized objects?” Silbiger said.
It’s a hard question.
For anyone who has driven a considerable distance across the United States, this sentiment resonates. Mile after mile, the American landscape is dotted with marvelous nature, maximum kitsch and everything in between.
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Silbiger captures this delightful juxtaposition of the bizarre and beautiful in a series of photographs titled ‘Wanderer’s Window’ that she made while traveling and living in a camper van during a yearlong sabbatical from November 2023 to November 2024.
Up until then, Silbiger had mainly documented the inner workings of Capitol Hill and the White House as a freelance photojournalist in Washington, DC.
After about seven years of covering politics every day, the repetition of the photographs started to wear on her.
“I really just kind of wanted to see the country and see the place we debate about all the time.” Silbiger said.
Silbiger’s creative burnout and yearning to explore the United States coincided with Bernert taking a buyout in the autumn of 2023 from his journalism job in the district. With nothing tying the couple to the city any longer, they pulled out a map and started to plot their route.
“We literally took a map and took a Sharpie and were like, okay,” Silbiger said, “if we start in the winter on the East Coast, how can we follow mild weather for a whole year?”
As the couple headed west, Silbiger started to break out of her creative rut. “Every single mile of the road was a new visual for me. So, it was absolutely like a huge, creative adrenaline shot to the heart,” she said.
One early stop involved the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California’s Alabama Hills, where Silbiger captured the photo that sparked the creative vision for her series.
After pulling into their campsite well after nightfall, the couple climbed into bed, wondering what and who surrounded them.
“We tuck ourselves into bed and we wake up the next morning and this was what my bedroom view was,” Silbiger exclaimed while showing a picture of jagged mountain peaks shrouded in low-hanging clouds as the morning sun washed gently over them. The whole scene was framed by the oddly skinny rectangular window of their van.
“Okay, now I had this first photo,” Silbiger said. “How do I make the rest of them?”
Over the course of the next year, Silbiger and her partner zigzagged across 35 states chasing mild weather, vast landscapes and anything that piqued their interest. All the while she used their van as a giant camera.
“It’s really, really satisfying to get it just right because, you know, sometimes with digital photography, it feels too easy,” Silbiger explained. “But a 25-foot RV is not a user-friendly camera to make an exposure with.”
Silbiger’s portfolio is a reflective combination of classic American motifs like Saguaro cacti and herds of bison, and odd roadside attractions like the inflatable Maine lobster. The unexpected nature of the photographs mimics the discovery of what lies on the open road.
Despite driving roughly 25,000 miles, Silbiger is hungry to get back on the asphalt to continue photographing.
“There’s always something cool to see around the corner,” she said. “That’s the beauty of a road trip … What does the next road have to offer?”
The-CNN-Wire
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