In Search of Small-Town America – The Ultimate American Road-Trip by British writer and photographer, Jeremy Hammond is a year-long exploration into the many factors at work, compounding the degeneration in many of North America’s smaller communities.
The ’50-50 Project’ began in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in April of 2006. A three hundred-and-fifty day extended road-trip, covering over 30,000 road-miles – and a good few thousand in the air – visiting all fifty American States – in as many weeks.
For each of the States, a ‘target-town’ was selected: The chosen small town should be as close as possible to the physical centre of each State, and it should have a population of between one thousand and ten thousand, based on the year 2000 census. The route finally passed through over 1,500 small towns and villages.
Published online for the first time – in seventeen volumes, available as pdf downloads – the work is a collection of around 2,400 photographs, and over 340,000 words, exploring the many differing processes, affecting the deterioration of Small-Town America. It is in no way intended as an authoritative work, or a comprehensive travelogue, and although focussed primarily on small-town culture, it is very much a random, and personal view. It includes a variety of incidental observations, societal, media and political comment, and carefully considered insight. Often related with caustically casual humour, and with a sprinkling of expletives thrown-in, it’s an occasionally flippant, but always informed view, of an iconic part of the wide American landscape.
