Do Not Feed Alligators is a heady mix of fashion-inspired portraiture and dérive snaps encompassing winding back roads, breakfasts and county fair delicacies, friendly strangers and a perceptible curiosity about the peculiarities found only in the United States.
Off the road and back in New York, Shama swung by the office Newsstand to tell us about his experience, and the potential dangers of getting lost in the famous Alligator Alley in Florida.
The first thing I’m curious about is how long you spent on the road making this book. Tell me about the journey.
It started in 2012 and went all the way until 2017. It’s really 10 or 12 different road trips that ranged from about a month and half at the longest, to maybe 4 or 5 days at the shortest. The concept was to travel with people I didn’t know very well, people that I’d barely met. A lot of girls were asking me to shoot them because I was shooting for American Apparel at the time, so I integrated the two. I asked some of the girls, ‘Would you care to do a road trip?’ and of course, that was a bit difficult, but after a few girls went with me and knew I was a cool guy they would recommend other friends. It was fun.
I noticed that you really get to know a person in a different way when you travel with them. It’s like everything is condensed—you get lost, and most of the time you don’t have cell reception, so you use maps and signs. There was no itinerary planned, just a starting point and an end point to each trip. It was always sort of ‘Where do we go tomorrow?’ each day. And then I was also documenting the people we were meeting on the road and taking portraits of them, and that’s how the whole thing came together. It was in the South and the Southeast—Texas and Florida.
I can definitely feel the Florida energy in the book—that’s where I grew up.
I love Florida because I’ve gone there every year since I was a kid. My parents have a place on the Gulf of Mexico near Fort Myers Beach. I love the wild area of the Everglades—we used to land in Miami then cross Alligator Alley. It filled my childhood dreams.
Have you heard any of the urban legends about Alligator Alley? They say you really should not get lost in there or pick up hitchhikers.
Oh yeah, all the time! They used to say that if you’re out of gas, just lock your doors and maybe someone will stop to help you. My grandma’s car once broke down in the middle of the Alley, but since she was an older lady someone stopped to help her and that’s the only case where it was okay. Everything went fine, but it can be scary. You’ll see things like panther crossing signs. There’s also signs in East Texas that say ‘Do Not Feed The Alligators’ and the ‘Do Not,’ to me, as a European, is a very American thing.
The first thing I noticed when I was a kid coming to America were signs like that because in Europe, there’s a different kind of notice system, where they don’t have to write down everything—it's like, you’re just supposed to know. Here, it’s spelled out, like ‘Do not put your dog in the microwave’ or whatever. You have to put it out there or some crazy person will try it. ‘Don’t smoke in the elevator—it’s the law!’ even though everyone has known that for decades. The book is very ‘my America’ as a European. It’s a mix of my first feelings when I was traveling with my parents and my recent experiences, as well.
It’s really cool that you’re from Switzerland and have lived around the world, but still have strong connections to America, specifically Florida and the South. Where did you go on your first road trip for the project?
The first trip started in Florida. I was still living in Paris at the time and so I brought a girl with me and decided to do a small road trip—like a six day thing before joining my parents for the holidays. We drove from Miami to the Keys and my camera broke along the way, so I spent the last three or four days shooting with disposable cameras as I was using film only. I called my sister who was joining us for the family trip—she’s also a photographer and I asked her to bring me a camera. She gave me a point-and-shoot Fuji camera that her husband had bought in Japan, and it became the camera that I bought afterwards because it was so good. I think there’s a single photo in the glossy section of the book from that trip.