In 2021, Adam Scher and Monica Jane Frisell embarked on an adventure in their Nomadic Photo Ark - a cargo trailer that they converted into a solar powered mobile darkroom and living space. Adam and Monica travel across the United States, stopping in small cities and towns to photograph and record the conversations of the people they meet for their project ‘Portrait of US.’

The concept harkens back to the great traditions of documenting America as championed by Zora Neale Hurston, photographers from the FSA, Studs Terkel, Alan Lomax and modern pioneers like Trelani Michelle.

In early 2022 the Nomadic Photo Ark spent a month in Savannah as part of ARTS Southeast’s ON::View Residency Program, and the project was so successful that in 2023, the artists were invited back for a two month exhibition. IMPACT Magazine caught up with them towards the end of their exhibition to get the full story on their adventures.

Jon Witzky: How do you talk about your project - “Portrait of US?”

Monica Jane Frisell: We say that we create portraits of places through the stories of people that currently live there. I almost don't even think it's just a portrait – I’ve been thinking more about how we’re facilitating communication – it's not just gathering stories, it's encouraging communication.

Adam Scher: Through those stories.

MJF: Yeah, between people. And then also reminding people what it's like to just sit down and talk with each other, because I do think that's something that people forget to do.

Emily Earl: Well, it really seems like it's very therapeutic for people –

AS: It is.

EE: Right? Nobody listens anymore. And so then people stop sharing things because it's tiring to not be listened to.

MJF: Or you think you’re not important enough to share. I think that's the biggest one.

AS: And that's what Trelani said [Savannah-based writer and oral historian Trelani Michelle] she texted us and thanked us after her session and said, “I hope everybody leaves my interviews feeling as heard as I do after leaving you guys.” And I thought that was a really cool thing. That's always been something we recognize as valuable in our process – having people be heard. Especially in the beginning – it was still fairly locked down with COVID.

MJF: I guess on our Patreon page there's this whole thing about COVID that I didn't realize was still on there. I think it was an important part of why we started this. It just felt like everybody was isolating and becoming isolated in the way they try to talk to each other.

AS: Yeah, physically it played a huge role in the trailer, all of that, too.

MJF: Before I met Adam, I went on this train ride from Albuquerque to New York. And I had to sit at a table for dinner, and I was traveling alone. Normally if you're in a pair, they'll put you at your own table or with another pair. I was put at a table with three other singles - a drunk rancher from Texas and this British ex-pat who was – this was right after Brexit – he was furious. He was getting rid of his passport. He was like, fuck Britain. He had no desire to ever go back.

But I thought about how cool that was, that we all had to sit there and eat this meal together – everybody was super nice. The Texas guy was definitely, probably a Trump guy, and this was in 2019.

So originally for the project, I just wanted to have dinners with people. But then when COVID hit, that didn't seem viable. But that was the conversation I wanted – you can come to the trailer and we sit and have coffee, or we sit and eat, and then there's a portrait element to it. But I didn't know how that was going to fit in.

AS: And I think we will do that, by the way.

MJF: Yeah, I still think we should do that.

AS: Portable pizza oven!

MJF: Adam has a love for pizza - I think it would be really cool to offer free pizzas to people, and then you just sit down and eat. There's a lot of projects like that, where people are facilitating these dinners – where no one knows each other, but they just sit and eat. No topic is really off the table, in terms of what you can talk about. But you have to be respectful, and you have to eat the whole meal.

EE: I could see you guys doing some version of that around a campfire. Because so many good, weird, interesting conversations happen around a campfire, and you guys are camping a lot of the time.

MJF: Yeah, totally.

EE: You guys have so many different avenues now. You've got the zine that's giving these shorter snippets of different conversations with the portraits, you have the video booth. And you have the full-on, go out, take a photo and tell a long form story. You have all of these different ways to gather experiences.

AS: And different levels of accessibility for people to participate – even just posting some prompts on Instagram stories – there's kind of different ways of having people engage and participate. Regardless, we want to do this project for a total of five years.

MJF: But also I think this project is going to be changing, even within those five years.

JW: Oh, So you have a definite time period?

AS: Yeah.

MJF: I just want to be moving for five years.

AS: But whatever we're doing in ten years is also going to have – it's going to be storytelling in some form.

MJF: We're going to be doing this in ten years? [laughter]

EE: When you guys were saying, you know – I don't want to rip into the like psychoanalysis of this. But I kind of do.

JW: Go for it.

EE: How you guys are asking everyone to share a moment in their lives that was a – what's the word that you use?

AS + MJF: ‘Pivotal’.

AS: We started by saying “something that changed your trajectory.”

EE: Right, the trajectory. Was there something in your lives that was a moment that changed your trajectory? And that's why you're interested in hearing about it from other people?

MJF: I got sober when I was 32. That changed my entire life – I mean, I would not be sitting here if I didn't do that. So that was a pretty fast decision that I made, to get my shit together and stop drinking. I woke up at my friend's house. I had gone out for one drink and then it was like, all night. When I looked in the mirror I was like, okay, I am going to kill myself, or I'm going to go get this. So I started going to AA – I was in AA for almost a year, but I don't do it anymore. I see that one moment and I think that's why I'm curious,

I think that's why I ask that. Sometimes you have a very clarifying moment. It wasn't like I was an on-the-street alcoholic but I think I have a problem with it – it makes life a little harder for me. But that was it – it was that one morning in the mirror in my friend's bathroom, you know. But also, buying my truck is another pivotal moment for me – making the decision to get that led me to be able to do all the stuff that I've done in the last three years. Then there's also meeting Adam, choosing to stay in Seattle.

AS: But you trace all those things back to that one decision.

MJF: Yeah, I do trace it all back to that one sobriety decision, like hard-core. One night I called a family friend who’s in the program and I went to a meeting with him – it was an anniversary meeting. And there was this woman who had 30 years of sobriety, and she was an artist. And I realized, Oh, you can do this. You can still make your art and have friends and enjoy existing – because I literally thought everything had to revolve around drinking, and that, for me, just didn't work. It doesn't work with my brain. You know? So maybe that's why that question, for me at least, is interesting.

EE: Yeah. There are these kind of mysterious moments of clarity that you can't really put your finger on why or how it happens. But they do happen.

MJF: Yeah. I don't know how. In the program they're always like, Oh, that's your higher power or that's God or whatever. But for me, I’m like, Yeah, that was me making that choice. And that was me deciding to put the work first.

AS: You get such a wide range of emotions in these stories – it can be really hard to sit and edit them. Which is why we still have plenty of stories that we haven't edited from over a year and a half ago.

JW: So fill me in – how did this all start?

AS: We were in Seattle and Birch Bay, Washington, kind of living there and practicing. Then we were invited across the country to Vermont. That was the first place we went.

EE: Did you apply for that? Or what do you mean ‘invited’?

MJF: My mom had a show of her work, so we were supposed to go to visit New York to see my folks and my mom was like, “Would you come up and bring the 8 x 10” and take some portraits of some of the people up there?” And I was like, “Yeah, that’d be great.” We were going to fly. So the Ark had nothing to do with it. Then the gallery director found out what we were doing and asked if we would be willing to come out. So we ended up driving out. And that was a huge thing too, because we chose to leave Adam's car in Seattle and that was really when we had to –

AS: Consolidate.

MJF: Yeah, fully consolidate and live.

EE: How long were you guys dating before you decided to –

AS: To move into the truck? Two months.

EE: Two months! Wow. And when you guys met, were you like, “I have this dream of living in this truck and traveling around the country, and – ?”

AS: Pretty much.

MJF: I mean, I was already doing it, pretty much. I was going to leave in April. I met Adam in February, and then –

EE: And where were you going to go?

MJF: I was just going to head south. I didn't really know where.

EE: And you were just going to go explore?

MJF: I was going to do what we're doing now. I was going to do this project, or attempt to. I was planning on heading to the Southwest, just because that's where I had people that I knew.

EE: But you didn't have a residency or anything officially planned?

MJF: No, I had nothing planned. I think that was a major blessing too, because it just made me slow down. I was living at an RV park for two and a half months, actually figuring out how to make the trailer work.

AS: It was hard to go from living in it, to working in it, to driving in it, because they’re all very different. It would take 2 hours to set up at a campsite for us.

MJF: Yeah. And now it takes maybe 20 minutes. But, I was planning on doing it no matter what. I mean, the trailer was almost done when I met Adam. He helped me paint it, but it was all built. The skeleton was all there. And then –

JW: Where did it come from?

“I mean, I wish I could think of something really kind of smaller that wouldn’t make me cry, but the first thing that comes to my mind is, I got sober 35 years ago - almost 36 years ago. And it, you know, it just changed my life completely.

The minute I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, my whole spiritual perspective completely changed. It’s like the universe has just taken me from where I was ignorant, completely closed in, to being willing to embrace a new idea. I still have a long way to go to really embody who and what I truly am. I have a long way to go, but I certainly am not where I used to be.”

– Moe, Savannah, GA

MJF: I was living in Truth or Consequences and I bought it in Las Cruces. I was looking for a 12- or 14-foot cargo trailer with brakes, and a double axle with brakes. I wanted to get something brand new, because trailers disintegrate really quickly. I had just finished doing the TransAmerica Trail, and that was where I really decided that this was what I was going to do - not only getting the 8 x 10 camera, but then deciding that I was going to build a studio that I could bring with me. Some of the first drawings of the trailer design are from that trail. And then I got to T-or-C at the end of that.

AS: Then we met. Drove to Vermont. And then Savannah with ARTS Southeast. And then it was Cleveland, Green Mountain Falls, then Florida. Then here again. And next we'll be in Virginia, and then in a different part of Vermont.

MJF: And then I think we're kind of just committing to spending the winter in the Southwest. So did that answer your question? I forgot what you asked.

AS: That happens with us. I'll ask a question, and the response is amazing. I don’t remember what I asked, but I don't care. I feel like we've started asking more questions in our talks. More intentional questions. Instead of just like, “Elaborate on that.” You know what I mean? It's more than just asking someone to continue to talk.

MJF: I feel like we know how to help people say what they're trying to say a little bit.

JW: I love those early field recordings, people heading into rural areas to collect stories and songs.

AS: And just the sound, right?

JW: The sound. Yeah, it's such a cool thing. This feels like a new iteration of that. You know, you're not collecting necessarily the music of the moment but the ideas and the –

EE: the feelings.

MJF: Yeah. You know, when we got to Maitland, FL, we realized that Eatonville is right next door and Zora Neale Hurston spent a lot of time there.

AS: We also spent a lot of time there. Their Eyes Were Watching God is based around her time there.

MJF: She did a bunch of recordings down there, too, they were so cool.

EE: Can I ask a technical question? I was totally going to ask this at the Artist Talk, but then all these other questions were coming. But just to be nerdy about the technical stuff: I think it's interesting that you're mixing technologies – This visual, analog, super old school, very hands-on photography practice, and then digital, very high-tech, sitting in front of a computer, time consuming sound recording. It's these super different ways of going about everything.

AS: I agree, it's cool.

EE: Would you ever think about using a reel-to-reel or something? I realize that's a ridiculous thing to do. But I mean, some people would say that shooting with an 8 x 10” is ridiculous, so…

AS: If I felt there was a benefit to the process, then yeah. But there isn’t.

EE: Right.

MJF: You could always record the edited versions to reel-to-reel. To get that little crackle, if you really wanted to.

AS: But whatever I'm recording on, you're still sitting in front of a microphone. And I think the closest we got is that the microphone that Monica bought looks – you know, it's silver. It’s a brand new, amazing microphone, but it has the look of something older.

MJF: I wanted something as big and intentional as the camera, like physically for the person to really know that it was happening and stuff like that. But the reason why I shoot on film is because I know that it will always be there. I don't have the same kind of trust for digital or the cloud or hard drives – I mean, you can tell me that's archival as much as you want, but I won't believe it. And I like that a negative will last for a long time and can be found without me and can still be seen and used.

AS: I'm sure there's a point in time where a selection of those stories are put onto something that someone in 100 years could still read. But as far as the process that we do now, I don't think it would add enough to make it really worth that. But I thought about it. It would be – a part of it would be really, really cool.

MJF: It would be cool to learn it.

AS: I think if my dad still had his reel-to-reel in the basement, I feel like we would at least want to have it with us, to experiment with it. Talk about a cool way to show the audio in a gallery setting, right? Having a reel playing would be amazing. And so I think it'll happen at some point. But for actually making the work, yeah, I don’t know.

JW: It's interesting to think of – because your project can go in so many different directions, or be formatted differently for different things. It can be this archival project that belongs in the Library of Congress, but also it could be something that could be at a gallery or a museum.

AS: Yeah, it can be both. I feel like that's what a lot of this year is about, between the two shows. Between this show and the one in Florida. It’s about adding more ways to gather stories and also the different ways to show the work. In terms of where the work should exist and be seen – you know, the Library of Congress. That kind of long-term archive.

JW: Yeah.

MJF: I mean, we may not even have any screens at the show in Maitland. But there will be an entire room that's dedicated just to audio.

EE: And it plays out loud?

AS: It just loops. So you get to sit and just listen.

In 2023, Monica and Adam will be traveling in the Nomadic Photo Ark to gather stories and portraits in a town near you!

They’ll be stopping at InnisFree Village in Virginia then heading up to Lyndonville, Vermont before their exhibition “(UN)common Conversations” opens at Art & History Museums in Maitland, Florida.

CLICK HERE to keep up with them and to support their work.

“I was hospitalized for depression, which was a whole ordeal. It was crazy. But I guess being around those people and hearing their stories and stuff kind of made me realize that I have a lot to be thankful for, you know? I'd been down on my luck for a while, but just being in that environment, I definitely walked away from that being like, ‘Okay, it's time to put in the work to get better,’ because some of these people have had like, absolutely terrible disadvantaged lives that have led them to that moment.

I got a lot better. I kind of took a lot of people out of my life that didn't really have any business being there, like some people that were I guess using me and things. And one of the biggest things is that I try my best to hammer into everybody's heads around me is that it doesn't have to be that way.”

– Juno with their partner Payton, Orlando, FL

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