David Rae Morris
Photographer/Filmmaker

In the summer of 1979, when I was 19 years old, I made a young man’s journey across the country. Catching a ride with a friend from New York to Colorado, I then hitch-hiked to California and up the coast to Oregon. In mid-July, I bought a 30-day Greyhound bus ticket and rode to Minneapolis, Chicago, Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia, arriving at my mother’s house in Washington D.C. 7 hours before the ticket expired. As an aspiring photographer, I had yet to explore the full range of possibilities the camera had to offer, and this was my first attempt at trying to document anything in a linear and cohesive manner. What strikes me about these photographs today is not that they are good--because many of the negatives are pretty bad--but that they offer direct insights into my beginnings. I was obviously struggling with the basic elements of exposure and composition, not to mention figuring out what to photograph. And therein lies the magic: this is an open-ended road map to my evolution as a photographer.