‘Glossy meets gritty’
Anne-Marie Michel had no ties to trucking, but that didn’t keep her from developing a deep appreciation for women who do.
This appreciation had its start in a side project the London-based photographer undertook somewhat on a whim. Her work with fashion and celebrities having a decidedly shiny aesthetic, she found herself desiring a different kind of creative outlet – and inspiration spoke loud and clear.
“I just decided one day, ‘I fancy going on an adventure and meeting some trucker women and shooting some portraits,’” Michel told Land Line Now.
This was what took her to an Orlando truck stop in 2017. She sat there for three days, waiting for a woman to enter. Finally, she spotted one exiting and went after her in the parking lot, gesturing wildly in an attempt to get her attention.
“And of course, she kind of looked at me like the crazy woman I was, waving my arms around in a truck parking lot,” Michel said.
Thus, that first attempt at meeting women in the industry was a bust. But rather than giving up, Michel simply modified her approach. She sought connections through people she knew and found that a childhood friend of her sister worked for a trucking company and happened to know a female trucker in Ohio.
After photographing that trucker and starting to accrue a street cred of sorts, things snowballed – opening doors for her to shoot other portraits over the next year and also bringing about a surprise: Michel found the women she photographed had richer stories and were more open about their lives than she’d expected.
“I thought I was going to have, like, ‘OK, you can take my picture. And I’ll maybe tell you what my favorite truck stop food is,’ or something,” she said. “But they just brought me in. I sat in trucks with people, and they told me their life stories. And I told them my life story back. We had this kind of true communication, and it was different and beautiful. And I became a part of this community of women.”
That was just the beginning. While she initially hadn’t planned to put this passion project out into the world, Michel ultimately was inspired to display the photos. Her first “Sisters of the Road” exhibit took place in London in 2019, and from there, her portraits traveled elsewhere in the United Kingdom, as well as to Germany, Italy, Spain and Australia.
“I was just like, ‘I can’t just let this sit here and be just for me; I have to share it with the world,’” she said. “Because the world needs to hear these women, their voices.”
Both the women and their words now live in a “Sisters of the Road” photobook that was published in 2022. In it are portraits of 40 truckers, captured in the landscapes they travel and showcased alongside statements such as “It’s definitely not an easy life” and “When I can’t drive I don’t want to exist anymore.”
In terms of the feedback she’s received, Michel noted that people have described the work as “glossy meets gritty,” with her fashion style of photography seeping into this documentary form. She’s also received a number of awards for this project – but even with all this recognition and her widespread exhibits, she knew from the prompting of her U.S.-based photo subjects that the journey was far from complete.
“I see this as half being their work, as well. It’s not just mine; it’s very much theirs,” she said. “When I asked them what they wanted out of this, they said, ‘It has to come back into our world.’”
So Michel made plans for bringing the work back to its roots in America – which was a full-circle experience for her in terms not only of this project but also of her own origin story. She noted that the spirit evident in the truckers she photographed was one she first saw in her own mother – who, finding herself divorced and needing employment after 18 years not working, put her four daughters in a Trans-Aire van and moved from Houston to Ohio.
“And we just rebirthed our lives in kind of a true American Dream fashion,” Michel said, adding that although she’s lived in England for two decades now, what she experienced during her formative years in the U.S. made it the obvious place to focus her project. “It’s very much rooted in America and the American Dream, the way that you can particularly here … rebuild, rebirth everything yourself if you have this vision and maybe the gumption to do it. … And for me, that’s very much why I had to do it here. It’s just a part of the story; I couldn’t do it anywhere else.”
“Sisters of the Road” came home to America earlier this year, launching in San Francisco at the beginning of March, which happens to be Women’s History Month.
And something else that made its tour here special was that it appropriately took place in a truck provided by Uber Freight, with the photos showcased in the trailer and one of the featured truckers driving them across the country.
“This is the tying-together of the ultimate artistic outcome for me,” Michel said. “This is trucker women in the back of a truck.”
From San Francisco, the mobile gallery traveled to an international photography festival in Houston and then to the TA in Little Rock, Ark., dedicated to Idella Hansen, one of the “Sisters of the Road” truckers. After that, it moved on to its grand finale at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Ky., where a number of the featured women gathered and greeted visitors outside the trailer.
Inside, showcased in an area built to appear like a high-end art gallery, were eight 48-inch ChromaLuxe prints on metal.
“I thought it was really important that these women … who drive these huge metal rigs are actually immortalized on these huge metal prints,” Michel said.
She added that the trailer also had a TV showing some of the women telling their stories, as well as an account of the journey “Sisters of the Road” has taken thus far.
Music by trucker and singer/songwriter Bill Weaver contributed to the immersive art experience, too – and with how well it all was received at MATS and elsewhere, Michel noted that this finale might not actually be the end.
“We are considering doing a ‘part two’ and traveling a bit more with the mobile gallery,” she said.
Regardless of what happens with the gallery going forward, Michel has found that professionally, she can’t go back. While she approached this portrait project with an aim to bring the sensibilities of fashion photography to the world of trucking, the women she encountered left just as great an impression on her.
“With these trucker women, there was no facade. There was just this beautiful, raw truth. And I loved it,” she said. “I’m not shooting fashion right now … because I kind of feel like I can’t go back to it.”
And she hopes that in return, the women she photographed experienced something just as powerful.
“I hope they feel elevated, that they feel celebrated, acknowledged,” Michel said. “I hope they feel proud.”
To see more about Sisters of the Road, visit its website at SistersOfTheRoad.com or watch Land Line Now’s full interview with Michel.. LL
Land Line Now’s Ashley Blackford contributed to this report.