A MOTEL with rainbow-colored doors, a freshwater fishing hall of fame, a cheerful yellow California highway sign with a knowing “Good Luck” emblazoned across it.

    These are just some of the thousands of pictures photographer David Graham has captured in the last 30 years on his quest to document the quirky and quintessentially American way people and places choose to express themselves across the country.

    Graham set out on road trips to capture the unique individuality of his ordinary subjects, traveling from coast to coast as he found a family napping during a summer in Maine or a young local football team practicing drills next to a tower topped with a statue of corn.

    “My photographs are often about people’s passions,” Graham said.

    “The way they have painted their house, the kind of car they own, the sculpture they built in their front yard, the way they dress up for a parade or how they have taken on the impersonation of a celebrity or historic figure.”

    Graham first fell in love with photography in his very own home, looking at slides from family vacations his father had photographed before he was even born.

    That interest in the American family stayed with Graham, who decided to be a photographer his senior year in high school, when he took his very first road trip with wife Jeannine in 1981.

    It was then, on a six-week trip to and from Pennsylvania to California, the couple realized just how distinct the colors and characters of each state could be.

    Graham would capture people’s homes, highway signs, and the unique roadside attractions that make the American road trip so unique.

    And, with an 8-by-10 view camera that Graham described as being “slow and expensive to shoot,” the photographer made sure to pack each picture with as much meaning as possible as he investigated Americans’ expression of freedom.

    “I loaded in detail, color, subject, structure, historical references and humor,” he said. “I wanted everything.”

    Graham would go one six more road trips in just seven years, traveling through Maine, New Orleans, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and North Carolina, to name a few, before he began freelance work that afforded him plane tickets instead of gas mileage.

    The photographer, whose work features in renowned modern art museums in both the U.S. and Europe, has since taken a teaching position at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, which still allows him to travel on his summer vacations.

    (SD-Agencies)