The eccentrics of the open road

Photographer Alison Turner traded her corporate life for a nomadic one. This is what she found.

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September 16, 2015

.polaris__post-meta--date { display: none; } .polaris__post-meta--date.no-script { display: block; padding-left: 45px } September 16, 2015

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(Alison Turner)

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(Alison Turner)"I spent years in advertising, climbing the corporate ladder, until I realized that it wasn't making me happy," Turner said over email. "In fact it was very unhealthy. I decided to save as much as I could until the day I decided to quit, which was in 2008."When the inevitable loneliness of travel set in, Turner used photography, which was only a hobby at the time, to interact with the constantly changing landscape and its inhabitants."I took a point and click camera and starting taking photos of things that interested me," she said. "I wanted to remember my journey and I tried to document the world around me from my own perspective."

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(Alison Turner)

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(Alison Turner)In her near-decade on the road, Turner has circled the country four times. American Portraits is Turner's ongoing, personal project to document her nomadic life and the wide variety of characters she meets.Turner doesn't dawdle when taking a photograph. She captures her subjects with little direction almost immediately upon meeting them. And while this technique may be used out of personal necessity, her portraits reveal a knack for capturing a person's essence."The series means a lot to me. Since I am an extremely shy person, approaching all of these strangers was a challenge," she confesses.