Ben Speck

Ben Speck presenterer et utvalg av fotografier fra Riding the Rails, en prosjekt om den amerikanske ´hobo´og sin idee av frihet.

Vernissage begynner kl. 20:00
Canapé og Champange til de første som kommer (RSVP)

Followed by live music by Sandra Kolstad til late

ABOUT RIDING THE RAILS:
In the summer of 2008, I accompanied a young hobo on a 2000 mile journey across the United States, without spending a dime on transport and, arguably, without leaving a carbon footprint at all. We walked, hitchhiked, but most of all rode on freight trains across the vast and stunningly beautiful American plains and mountain valleys.

´Riding the Rails´ refers to the practice of illegally and secretly hitching rides on industrial freight trains, and defines a whole lifestyle.

While this subculture was born out of necessity during the Great Depression, the new generation of train-hoppers is poignantly among the only groups in the US unaffected by the recent financial crisis. As their predecessors, they call themselves Hobos.

They are ´kids´ disillusioned by the American dream and who don’t want to be part of what they call the machine. Hobos don’t vote. They don’t pay any taxes or bills. Most modern hobos are homeless at least part of the year.

For the majority this way of life is a conscious choice of ideology, not one of necessity. There is unanimous sense of enjoying an exclusive freedom not accessible to others.