HITCHHIKE

by Henry Wessel

Jul 26, 2026

After 10 years, I finally made it out to Minnesota Street Project’s SF Art Book Fair yesterday with my wife. It was very rad to see so many publications and publishers under one roof but on the other side of that coin it was quite overwhelming for me. We didn’t spend a ton of time there which ultimately saved me from spending an absurd amount of money but I did manage to swing by Deadbeat Club’s booth and snag a copy of the late Henry Wessel’s Hitchhike. I didn't even know this book existed so that was quite a nice surprise. If you’ve been reading foto-notes for a while, you may have caught past nods to some of Wessel’s work. For the past year or two, his work (along with Austin Leong) has been a HUGE inspiration for me and my approach to documenting the world around me. It’s the kind of work that feels effortless yet so appealing to the eye at the same time. It feels just right..

Without further ado, here are some of my favorite photographs from Hitchhike by Henry Wessel:

fun fact: my dad has the same exact Cadillac in his garage + my wife and I live in the 916 area code (see address painted on the curb).. such an unexpected connection for me!

one of my all-time favorite photographs. It brings me back to day trips to the bay as a kid when toll booth workers were still a thing..

While attending Penn State University in the early 1960s, Henry Wessel spent his weekends hitchhiking west and back again. Each Friday afternoon, he packed a knapsack, took his camera, and waited for the next ride. By Monday morning he was back for classes, only to leave again the following weekend - a compelling habit for a kid from New Jersey who, until college, had never ventured west of Philadelphia. Somewhere along the way, the desire to explore the medium became inseparable from the search for what lay beyond the life he had known. Photography was no longer simply accompanying the journey; it had become the way he understood it. Wessel would later describe the experience simply: “It’s thrilling to be outside your mind, your eyes far ahead of your thoughts.”

That openness defines Hitchhike. Intuitively working while driving or at the roadside, Wessel transformed the overlooked details of the American landscape into photographs of remarkable precision, economy, and wit, allowing chance encounters and fleeting alignments to shape a body of work that remains one of the most distinctive visions of the American road.

A long-anticipated publication spanning more than four decades of work, Hitchhike was edited and sequenced by Henry Wessel himself, making it one of the last books he completed before his death.