Middle Ground — A TRP Photographic Journey – June 18-July 3rd, 2026
This project has been with me for years, and it has evolved more than once. At its largest, it was overwhelming — too broad in scope and miles, too ambitious. Rather than walk away, I reframed it, stripped it down, and found what it needed to be for me to actually do it. What remains is the part that was always true: my history with photography, the history of photography itself, and a trip to the middle.
That history runs deeper than I expected when I first put this on the calendar. In June 1996, I purchased a One Hour Photo Lab — my own business, one that changed my life. When I was running it, I would have told you I’d still have it. But the industry shifted, film moved on, digital came in, and I had to move with it. Thirty years later, I’ve rekindled my love for film — and so have many others. The fact that this trip falls in the same month as that anniversary wasn’t something I planned. It snuck up on me. And when it did, it clarified everything.
Middle Ground is a photographic journey in the truest sense — inspired by the parallel journeys of Todd Webb and Robert Frank, who traveled separately across America in 1955 and 1956 and made photographs that still define how we see mid-century life in this country. In June 2026, I’ll retrace a path through Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, adding locations of my own along the way. The cameras I carry reflect that history: the same models Webb and Frank used — period film bodies alongside a modern medium-format digital back — the ghosts of the medium’s past brought forward into my own continuing story.
Along the way, I’ll seek out the photographers, shop owners, darkroom technicians, and film devotees who are keeping analog alive alongside the digital world that surrounds it. People who speak the same language I do, in places I’ve never been. Film labs, communities I’ve never seen, connections made through the one thing that has defined my life for thirty years. These places share DNA with the lab I owned thirty years ago, and visiting them feels like the whole point.
My journey starts in Chicago at Central Camera Company — a camera and film shop since 1899 — and winds through the middle of the country with multiple stops in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri before ending in Rochester, New York, with a visit to the George Eastman Museum. I hope to find friends, make friends, and leave room for the unscheduled stops that always end up mattering most.
If you’re anywhere along or know people on the route (see the link below) — Chicago, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Rochester — I’d love to hear from you. A restaurant recommendation, a film shop I might have missed, a person I should meet, a driveway to sleep in. All of it welcome. I’ll also be selling photographs from this trip, including a limited number of prints to keep them special. Since my gas budget has changed dramtically recently. More on that as the trip takes shape.
tr/trp
Tim, this is amazing!! Taking us all with you on your journey! Thanks for being a great inspiration! 🙂