For more than a decade, Scottish photographer Sandy Carson documented the great American road trip. The resulting essay, I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart, chronicles his fascination with the everyday.
“When I first moved here, I was always collecting and archiving pictures as memories,” Carson said. There was a common thread running through them, the photographer said.
“It is kind of my view of the States and travel. Even after 20-odd years, I still have wide eyes travelling around the States. There are so many uncanny juxtapositions that catch my eye.”
A stuffed black bear sits on a display log at a taxidermy store in Austin, Texas.
A truck is parked next to a manicured hedge shaped like a manatee in Bolinas, California.
A woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty takes a break to look at her phone on Tax Day in Austin, Texas.
A Texas-shaped breakfast waffle at a hotel in Grand Prairie, Texas.
A banana peel sits next to a yellow line by the train tracks in Newark, New Jersey.
A billboard announces a question from God in Fort Stockton, Texas.
A taxidermy lion and various game in a supermarket aisle in Twisp, Washington.
A stormtrooper lies on a lawn chair next to a pool in Austin, Texas.
A row of four trees in a line with one lazing against a wall in Seattle, Washington.
A woman tries on a wedding dress at a thrift store in Austin, Texas.
A gas station takes on a new meaning in Austin, Texas.
A woman clutches a fish purse at an art show in Austin, Texas.
A tipsy Alcoholics Anonymous sign in Austin, Texas.
A shirtless man with an artificial leg in Seattle, Washington.
A gas station tips over after major winds near Comstock in west Texas.
A cow next to a cow in Humboldt County, California.
A minivan in Salida, Colorado.
A selfie outside a Charlie Brown Christmas window at Macy’s in San Francisco, California.
A motel room in Edinburg, Texas.
A pig cools down on a hot summer’s day in Ennis, Texas.
A hand-drawn lost dog poster in Austin, Texas.
A hearse in Grand Prairie, Texas.
A cyclist takes a bathroom break under the watchful eye of a dinosaur in Port Orford, Oregon.
A woman dressed as a tree in Salida, Colorado.
A giant pair of Texas-sized cowboy boots at a mall in San Antonio, Texas.
An abandoned car with a sunshade printed with dollar bills in Austin, Texas.
A caravan parked into a fence in Austin, Texas.
A soda machine outside a church under lock and key in Austin, Texas.
A jeweller’s window in San Francisco, California, is smashed during riots sparked after the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.
A dog making a Big Bird shadow next to an orange muscle car in Austin, Texas.
A family dog belonging to evacuees pokes its head out of a car window while smoke billows over a mountain during the Colorado wildfires.
A line of exercise bikes face the water on Vashon Island, Washington.
