The American Festivals Project, partially funded by a National Geographic Young Explorer’s Grant, is led by photographers Ross McDermott and Andrew Owen.
The project explores America’s variety of small-town festivals, with the aim of discovering a rich diversity of culture that has in part remained hidden. Traveling in a truck powered by Waste Vegetable Oil, and living in a 1964 truck camper, Ross and Andrew are covering an extensive array of unique festival life from forty-nine of America’s states.
Americans have heard of Mardi Gras and music festivals like Bonnaroo. But most of us know very little of the National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa, and have never heard of the Middle of Nowhere celebration in Ainsworth, Nebraska. Some festivals, such as the infamous Rattlesnake Roundups, date back to the 1940s. There are an endless number of colorful, mind-blowing events that span the calendar from January to December.
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Ross McDermott
www.surfacebelow.com
Ross received an undergraduate degree in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. Upon graduation, he lived for a year in Japan, documenting the culture and building a photography portfolio. Upon returning to the States, Ross has worked as a freelance photographer, taking him to several countries in Africa, India, and a U.S. Marine boot camp.
In 2007 Ross created and directed a five-month photography workshop called the Generations Project that pairs high school students with senior citizens in nursing homes. The workshop teaches high school students the basics of photography, audio recording, and producing audio slideshows.
In 2008 he exhibited a yearlong project titled ‘Stories from the Garden’ at LOOK3 / Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville, VA.
He is a 2008 recipient of a National Geographic Young Explorer’s grant.
Andrew Owen
Andrew Owen joined the American Festivals Project in January 2009. He comes to the AFP in the middle of his third year as Operations Manager for the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville, Va. Andrew is extremely grateful for the good folks at LOOK3 who are allowing him to spend some quality time behind the camera this spring. Driving cross-country is something Andrew has done a handful of times but never with a purely photographic agenda. After studying American history at Georgetown University, he is once again excited to turn his eye to the American landscape, its people, and to the diversity of their rituals and celebrations.
