Doug Biggert: Portraits On The Roadside

At the crossroads where we find a Good Samaritan and an amateur photographer are nearly 500 pictures of hitchhikers he picked up along the way, mostly in Northern California between the early 70s and today. Doug Biggert, having hitched himself in the 60s, has been particularly attuned not only to how easy it is to help someone stranded on the side of the road but also to how every person represents a story. Some are more interesting than others, of course, but even when someone has little to offer—and conversation has been one draw for Biggert—there’s still the possibility for a good picture. Calling him an amateur is not entirely fair. His knowledge of photography, from the great figures in its history such as Eugène Atget and Henri Cartier-Bresson, to the Americans working on the road both before him and at the same time, Robert Frank and Stephen Shore most prominently, has clearly served him well. Flipping through his book, Hitch-Hikers, published by Husson in 2007, there are portraits that could easily be inserted into Shore’s American Surfaces, with a similar look and sensibility. The 70s feel of color, of the people looking so much of the moment, adds to the record of that decade’s vernacular photography, now well regarded but dismissed at the time. That Biggert’s pictures surfaced at all, as is the case for so much art and music made outside the mainstream, is a matter of happenstance, particularly with regard to the fascination that Europeans feel for the road movie and the American West. Biggert’s collection taps into that ethos over and over again, with a seemingly endless cast of extras, each one the star of his or her own film still. For years, Biggert deposited his pictures into a box at home. Their discovery by the Parisian curator Xavier Carcelle led to the publication of the book and subsequent exhibitions in France and Belgium. This summer, his photographs will be shown closer to home, at Verge Gallery in Sacramento. Some of the people in the pictures fit the profile of the quintessential hitchhiker you wouldn’t normally stop for, a bedraggled, sketchy sort who may or may not be of sound mind, or someone who looks like trouble from a mile away. But Biggert did stop, although he didn’t always take a picture. He recalls once picking up a guy in Sacramento who was “playing Manson-type mental games. I thought several times of pulling into a station—it was daylight—and asking him to get out, but by the time we reached Vallejo, two-thirds of the way, I had won, and I took him way out of my way in the city and gave him $5 for coffee, but no picture.”* As writer Tim Foster astutely observed of Biggert’s work, “For some this may be the only portrait that exists outside of a mugshot.”** But then there are the innocent faces of kids who may look old enough to walk to junior high school but far too young to be on the side of the highway. Or the guy with the gasoline can who has obviously run out of gas, while others appear to have run out of luck. And then there’s the lanky blond, nearly naked except for the shortest pair of cutoffs and a leather vest. His suggestive look and pose, with even a passing glance, seem to answer the question “Where you headed?” with a knowing “All the way.” While 20 or 30 years may have passed since many of these pictures were taken, Biggert’s subjects, with their long, scraggly hair and aviator sunglasses, flannel shirts and hoodies, and knit hats and baseball caps, could easily blend into any crowd walking down the street today. Once Biggert had assembled a substantial number of pictures, he began keeping a binder full of them in his car, which he showed to hitchers he picked up and wanted to photograph—doing so, he said, “made explanation simpler.” Being thankful to get a lift, and from a friendly, interesting guy, most agreed to his request. Almost no one cast a wary eye. While it’s easy to think of Biggert’s car as his mobile portrait studio, what’s most compelling to consider is how all the pictures, brought together over many years and from across the whole country, not only reflect a spirit of time and place but form a larger portrait of the man who made them. *Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from an email with the author, May 15, 2009.
**“On the Road: Doug Biggert’s Hitch-Hikers,” Midtown Monthly, March 2008.
Photos courtesy of Xavier Carcelle and Chloe Colpe.